Space Exploration

High-resolution images of the icy worlds reveal towering mountains, yawning canyons and perhaps hints of a subsurface ocean

Snowfall is rare in our solar system. A tantalizing new image suggests that the dwarf planet may be one of the few places where it occurs

At 8:52 P.M. Eastern time, July 14, 2015, an all's-well signal from the New Horizons spacecraft finished its 4.5-hour, three-billion-mile trip from near Pluto through the solar system to alert mission control on Earth that it was in working order and had succeeded in gathering data

Although we've only just begun to see the scientific return from NASA's New Horizons mission and its close encounter with the Pluto–Charon system, this has been an unexpectedly profound human endeavor

Even if the decade-old flyby spacecraft could have used higher frequency microwaves to return data, large improvements might not have followed

Though the dwarf planet is now behind it, the spacecraft’s science returns are only just beginning

As the probe whizzes past, paint is already being dabbed, splattered and scumbled. The Pluto flyby is astounding everyone including artists. Here are a few works of #sciart that really stood out to me on Twitter, marking this historic event and the images from the NASA team and the New Horizons probe.

[post header image by Stella Maria Baer]

At just before 7:50 A.M. today, July 14, 2015, the New Horizons spacecraft made its closest approach to Pluto. After a 9.5-year, three-billion-mile voyage, the ship got within about 7,750 miles from the surface

Early this morning, if all has gone well, the first golden age of interplanetary exploration will have come to a close

Images from the New Horizons probe’s journey to the distant reaches of the solar system

After nine years, 4.8 billion kilometers and $700 million the New Horizons mission has officially begun to execute its sequence of Pluto flyby observations

A spacecraft set to fly by Pluto next week has returned photos that reveal more detail of four large dark patches near the equator