In July of 2015, the world was stunned to learn that Pluto, a tiny, distant dot that some didn&rsquo

In July of 2015, the world was stunned to learn that Pluto, a tiny, distant dot that some didn’t even consider a planet, was a dynamic, complex, and beautiful world. It’s still geologically active, it has an atmosphere, and it may have an ocean buried under its icy surface.  All of this is now known thanks to New Horizons, a probe that launched in 2006 to complete the tour of the solar system. But for scientists in pursuit of Pluto’s secrets since the late 1980s, it was a long wait. The mission faced political hurdles, budget battles, technical challenges, and near-disaster even as it was days away from speeding past Pluto.Alan Stern, the mission’s dogged principal investigator, and astrobiologist David Grinspoon talk about the decades-long effort to visit Pluto, the little space probe that could, and what’s left to explore in the far reaches of the solar system. Listen to the interview here. Photo by Ralph/Multispectral Visual Imaging Camera (MVIC) -- source link

More pics about