Jul 14, 2015
New Horizons Pluto flyby
This Doodle’s Key Themes
Earth is getting its first chance for an up close and personal peek at Pluto, the ball of rock and ice orbiting at the furthest edge of our solar system.
It’s all thanks to New Horizons, a thousand-pound space probe NASA sent spinning through space at 31,000 miles per hour. The probe’s interstellar jaunt spanned more than 9 years and 3 billion miles. That’s one heck of a commute!
The pictures New Horizons will send back to Earth are the first of their kind, painting scientists a more vivid picture of the far-off dwarf planet. Armed with these new insights, we’ll be able to pave a path for the next milestone in mankind’s journey of cosmic discovery.
Today’s Doodle was created by Kevin Laughlin in honor of New Horizons’ intrepid voyage to Pluto’s distant corner of the solar system. Celebrate this scientific breakthrough on NASA’s New Horizons YouTube page, where you’ll find videos detailing the extraordinary discoveries the space probe uncovers.
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