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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...

When it comes to landmark achievements in space exploration, today will be a date for the history books as the day humanity reached Pluto for the first time.

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...

Jesse Rogerson, a researcher at Toronto’s York University, says studying Pluto’s temperature and terrain will help scientists understand the evolution of various solar systems.

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.

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.