Pluto

Leaving Pluto in the dust: New Horizons probe gearing up for epic crossing of ‘termination shock’

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up-close spacecraft photo of a brownish-red two-lobed deep-space object that looks a lot like a snowman

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft conducted the first and only flyby of the Pluto system, culminating at the closest approach of that distant world in July 2015. Sailing onward, the probe carried out a Jan. 1, 2019 flyby of Arrokoth, a Kuiper Belt Object, or KBO, located in a region of space beyond Neptune called the … Read more

Is Pluto a planet or not? Who cares! Our love for the King of the Kuiper Belt is stronger than ever 95 years later

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A black and white image of a dome in the forest.

Clyde Tombaugh didn’t set out to discover Pluto when he sent his sketches of the night sky to Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona in 1929. More than anything, he just wanted to get off the farm in Kansas where he spent his days working the earth. At just 23 years old, Tombaugh sent his drawings, … Read more