PLUTO ANNIVERSARY

Jul 11, 2025

Ten years ago, the New Horizons spacecraft flew by the dwarf planet Pluto. The mission blew away all expectations of what Kuiper Belt bodies would be like. Scientists had thought of them as boring billiard balls of ice. But Pluto is as diverse as any major planet, with a thin atmosphere and its own kind of tectonic activity. It even has a vast heart-shaped glacier of frozen nitrogen! Check out ScienceNews’s recent retrospective with updates.