Blog 5 – Pluto

National Geographic

Watching the talk about the New Horizons mission made an impact on the way I now view space exploration. There are so many aspects to it detailed in the video I had never thought about before. Over the course of watching the talk, I was also able to fall in love with Pluto!

New Horizons was the first spacecraft to explore Pluto up close. Up until the point the spacecraft reached its destination, the only picture of Pluto was blurry, black and white, and pixelated. With the ability of New Horizons to fly by Pluto, the beautiful images depicting a planet with red dust and a heart shape allowed for the New Horizons scientists to deduce information about Pluto they had never been able to before. The most important discovery of this mission was the realization that Pluto is geologically active! Due to its small size and distance from the sun, it was assumed that Pluto was not active anymore, and would be cold, hard, and covered in craters. Instead, there is so much to explore on this magical planet!