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Article: Mission: Pluto: Pluto gets booted from the list of planets, but that isn't stopping a spacecraft from zooming toward it.
- Article from:
- WR News, Senior Edition (including Science Spin)
- Article date:
- October 6, 2006
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2006 Weekly Reader Corp. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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If you have a textbook with the solar system in it, you've probably crossed out Pluto by now. That small, icy object in our solar system was kicked out of the planet family on August 24.
Planet or not, Pluto and its frigid mysteries are now the destination of New Horizons. The spacecraft blasted off toward Pluto in January and is expected to fly by the former planet in 2015. The 1,054-pound spacecraft, about the size of a grand piano, will get as close as 6,200 miles from Pluto's surface.
Officials at NASA, the U.S. space agency, say the craft will give humans a first look at Pluto and the other objects in the Kuiper (KIGH-per) belt. The Kuiper belt is a ...