Pluto The Pup

pluto.jhuapl.edu In 2006, NASA dispatched an ambassador to the planetary frontier. The New Horizons spacecraft is now halfway between Earth and Pluto, on approach for a dramatic flight past the icy planet and its moons in July 2015. SARA http After 10 years and more than 3 billion miles, on a historic voyage that has already taken it over the storms and around the moons of Jupiter, New Horizons will shed light on new kinds of worlds we’ve only just discovered on the outskirts of the solar system. Pluto gets closer by the day, and New Horizons continues into rare territory, as just the fifth probe to traverse interplanetary space so far from the Sun. And the first to travel so far, to reach a new planet for exploration. www.nasa.gov

Part 2 of a documentary regarding the New Horizons NASA’s Pluto-Kuiper Belt Mission. Source- pluto.jhuapl.edu

Part 1 of a documentary regarding the New Horizons NASA’s Pluto-Kuiper Belt Mission. Source- pluto.jhuapl.edu

Part 5 of a documentary regarding the New Horizons NASA’s Pluto-Kuiper Belt Mission. Source- pluto.jhuapl.edu

**Winner of the 2006 Emmy Award for Student Achievement, NATAS Heartland Chapter. A NASA space probe called New Horizons is making its way to one of the farthest known objects in our solar system: Pluto. Onboard, an instrument built entirely by students at the University of Colorado will measure tiny particles of dust floating in deep space. The instrument’s findings may unlock some of the greatest mysteries of our solar system. Written, Produced, and Narrated by David Tauchen Edited by Nathan Gang

Science & Reason on Facebook: tinyurl.com Hubble’s Universe Unfiltered 15: Changing Views of Pluto While it may seem that the astronomy community’s views on Pluto changed radically with its reclassification in 2006, the truth is that our understanding of Pluto has always been shifting. This small, icy world in the distant reaches of the solar system is so difficult to observe that, even with Hubble’s keen resolution, it only shows up as a few pixels in an image. Only with patience, lots of observations, and huge amounts of computing power have we been able to create approximate surface maps of Pluto and discover some surprising alterations to its surface. Improved imagery yields improved insight. We now comprehend Pluto’s place within the solar system, and the exploration of that region has really just begun. Hubble’s Universe Unfiltered is a collection of video podcasts. Each episode offers an in-depth explanation of the latest news story or image from the Hubble Space Telescope, presented by astronomer Frank Summers. — Please subscribe to Science & Reason: • www.youtube.com • www.youtube.com • www.youtube.com • www.youtube.com — NOTES * In the video podcast, I jokingly refer to “Percival Lowell’s Greatest Mistakes” being 1.) the claim that Mars had a civilization using canals, and 2.) the prediction of a large planet beyond Neptune. Some may recognize this phrasing as an oblique reference to similar wording used in Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker series. (If you’re going …