EARTH: A Journey to Pluto and Beyond with New Horizons

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Maureen Moses (mmoses@americangeosciences.org)

4/1/2015

Alexandria VA—As NASA’s New Horizons mission to Pluto reaches its destination, join EARTH Magazine to learn about the latest spacecraft to study the furthest reaches of the solar system.

The feature explores the questions this mission hopes to answer such as Pluto’s relationship to similar astronomical bodies and the formation of comets on the outskirts of the solar system in the Kuiper Belt. After a successful encounter with Jupiter in 2007, scientists are eager to put New Horizons’ unique remote sensing equipment to use, which will provide them with the first in situ data sets from this region of the solar system in decades — and likely the only data set on such planetary bodies that will be collected in the near future: http://www.earthmagazine.org/article/journey-pluto-and-beyond-new-horizons.

Visit the farthest reaches of the solar system with EARTH Magazine and more in the March/April issue available now, and on the digital newsstand. Get “Down to Earth” with the USGS Landslide Response Team, reopen a cold case and explore if three convicts escaped the infamous Alcatraz Island and discover “Nature for Couch Potatoes”: www.earthmagazine.org.

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Keep up to date with the latest happenings in Earth, energy and environment news with EARTH magazine online at: http://www.earthmagazine.org/. Published by the American Geosciences Institute, EARTH is your source for the science behind the headlines.

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The American Geosciences Institute is a nonprofit federation of geoscientific and professional associations that represents more than 250,000 geologists, geophysicists and other earth scientists. Founded in 1948, AGI provides information services to geoscientists, serves as a voice of shared interests in the profession, plays a major role in strengthening geoscience education, and strives to increase public awareness of the vital role the geosciences play in society's use of resources, resiliency to natural hazards, and interaction with the environment.