This year, 2015, is “The Year of Pluto.” On July 14, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft will fly past icy dwarf planet Pluto, taking photographs and scanning Pluto with scientific instruments. Humans have sent exploratory spacecraft into regions of the solar system that contain terrestrial planets and gas giants, but this mission is the first flyby of an icy dwarf planet. Icy dwarfs are a third class of objects that are located in the Kuiper Belt, a region of the solar system beyond the planets. Very little is known about icy dwarfs. NASA has put together a video about the New Horizons project called The Year of Pluto. If you lack the time to watch the entire 58 minute video, the first two minutes are an introduction to the video that is both interesting and entertaining. Click the full-screen button to view it in HD.
At its current position, the New Horizons spacecraft is 2.95 billion miles (4.75 billion kilometers) from Earth. It is approaching Pluto at 13.79 km/sec (8.57 miles/sec). The round-trip time for a radio signal to travel from Earth to New Horizons and for a reply to travel from New Horizons back to Earth is almost 9 hours, so the spacecraft will be on its own during its encounter with Pluto.
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