Since its discovery in 1930, Pluto has been an unexplored world. That is about to change, with the approach of the NASA spacecraft New Horizons. It will sweep past the dwarf planet on Tuesday. NASA has already released new photos providing the closest look that humans have ever gotten of Pluto’s icy surface.
New Horizons has traveled 3 billion miles over the past nine-and-a-half years to reach Pluto. It is the size of a baby grand piano, and is the fastest spacecraft ever launched. The craft is expected to pass within 7,767 miles of Pluto, about the distance between Seattle, Washington, and Sydney, Australia.
“We’re going to knock your socks off,” said Alan Stern, the principal scientist of the New Horizons program.
Space Adventure
Pluto marks the last stop in NASA’s quest to explore every planet in our solar system. The U.S. space agency began its planetary explorations with Venus in 1962.
Today, Pluto is considered a dwarf planet. But in January 2006, when New Horizons was launched, it was still listed as one of nine planets in our solar system. Pluto was demoted seven months later, which left us with eight planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.