Journey to Pluto and Beyond: New Horizons

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://Avww.earthmagazine.ora/article/iourney-pluto-and-beyond-new-horizons.

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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.