ASA's New Horizons spacecraft is the first probe sent to Pluto and it'scheduled to arrive in July 2015. This is an artist's concept of the spacecraft flying past Pluto.
[From article]
Traveling at 1,000,000 miles per day, one of the fastest space vehicles ever made is extending human sight to Pluto and beyond to spy out details the Hubble Space Telescope hasn't been able to see.
Even at that speed, it took more than nine years to get this close. New Horizons launched in January 2006.
[. . .]
New Horizons, built and operated by John Hopkins University, will make its closest pass in July. Eye popping images will come. The on-board camera is powerful enough to recognize objects the size of buildings on Pluto's surface.
[. . .]
Maybe Pluto has rings like Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Multiple other instruments will inspect Pluto's atmosphere.
By approaching Pluto, which NASA classifies as a dwarf planet, New Horizons will also reach a new region of our solar system, which astronomers divide into classes of planet make-up.
Earth and its neighbors are rocky, earthy planets. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune are gas planets.
Pluto and its partner Charon, called by some its moon, are covered in ice.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/19/tech/new-horizons-vastness-pluto/index.html
Photos of two small Pluto moons open the door to a new vastness
By Ben Brumfield, CNN
Updated 2:31 PM ET, Thu February 19, 2015
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