Happy Birthday, Pluto!
Posted by barb on Mar 13, 2005 in Science Musings |
Well, Pluto is actually as old as our Solar Systemr, but the official announcement of the discovery of Pluto by Clyde Tombaugh was made 75 years ago today, on March 13, 1930. Space.com has an article about Pluto and its discovery.
Pluto is the planet we know the least about, partly because it is the most distant planet (at least most of the time) and the smallest. It is also the only planet that has not had a spacecraft fly-by. Hopefully that will change in the next few years.
NASA‘s New Horizon’s Pluto-Kuiper Belt Mission is scheduled to launch in January 2006, and will arrive at Pluto sometime in 2010 after a 2007 fly-by of Jupiter for a gravity-assist.