E-Books →The Pluto System After New Horizons

English | 2021 | ISBN: 0816540942 | 684 pages | True PDF | 36.92 MB
Once perceived as distant, cold, dark, and seemingly unknowable, Pluto had long been marked as the farthest and most unreachable frontier for solar system exploration. After Voyager accomplished its final planetary reconnaissance at Neptune in 1989, Pluto and its cohort in the Kuiper Belt beckoned as the missing puzzle piece for completing the first reconnaissance of our solar system. In the decades following Voyager, a mission to the Pluto system was not only imagined but also achieved, culminating with the historic 2015 flyby by theNew Horizonsspacecraft. Pluto and its satellite system ("the Pluto system"), including its largest moon, Charon, have been revealed to be worlds of enormous complexity that fantastically exceed preconceptions.