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That was borne out by a lack of a single impact crater on the surface in the image, the scientist said. That means that region of the planet may still be geo-logically active today.

This combination of images from July 1 to July 3, 2015, provided by NASA shows Pluto at different distances from the New Horizons spacecraft. Stern’s coveted job title now is principal investigator of the New Horizons mission. Sharper versions will be sent down over the...

Scientists do not know how Pluto formed such big mountains, the tallest of which juts nearly 11,000 feet (3,350 meters) off the ground, almost as high as the Canadian Rockies.

At 9 p.m. EDT on Tuesday, the spacecraft sent messages back to mission operations at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland, confirming it had completed its mission, ending nerve-wracking hours for the craft’s operators on Earth. “While...

New Horizons’ closest approach was scheduled for 4:49 a.m. PDT when the spacecraft would be just 7,800 miles away – close enough to take the first high-resolution images of Pluto’s mottled landscape. But over the past few weeks, we have been able to enjoy...

That’s 10 to 25 kilometers larger than previously estimated.

Size matters, even for dwarf planets. Pluto is now officially bigger than Eris, one of hundreds of thousands of mini-planets and comet-like objects circling beyond Neptune in a region called the Kuiper Belt.

An image captured by the New Horizons spacecraft and rolled out by NASA on Saturday, displays Pluto’s mystifying dark spots, which are regularly spaced apart and around 300 miles across each. The curtain hasn’t been pulled back like this since NASA’s Voyager 2...

Maybe New Horizons will find something so interesting that the powers that be will decide to redefine what makes a “planet” yet again. Just because Pluto is bigger than any other known object in the Kuiper Belt does not mean that it’s the most massive or...

Based on Lorri’s reconnaissance, the spacecraft is proceeding on its nominal trajectory, which will take it closer to the dwarf planet than the orbit of Charon, which will be on the opposite side of Pluto during the flyby.