
IPFS News Link • Space Travel and Exploration
Beyond Pluto: Meet The New Horizons Spacecraft's Next Target
• http://www.popsci.com, By Shannon StironeThe Pluto flyby was arguably one of 2015's top scientific achievements, maybe even one of the most memorable moments in the last decade. We now know what our ex-ninth planet looks like, and it's spectacular. Pluto turned out to have some surprising features like glaciers, nitrogen lakes, ice volcanoes, and the list is growing. The New Horizons mission to Pluto has surpassed everyone's expectations, and the good news is, the team has no plans of stopping yet. This summer, they're hoping to win an extended mission to explore another strange new world.
Onward And Outward
2014 MU69 is the official name of the icy rock that New Horizons hopes to explore next. Not much is known about MU69, but it orbits the sun a billion miles past Pluto, and NASA thinks it could be a time capsule from the earliest days of our solar system.