On this day (February 18) in 1930, astronomer Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. In more recent years, the International Astronomical Union (not NASA) has changed the status of Pluto from "planet" to "dwarf planet."
When the New Horizons probe passed Pluto last year, we saw that Pluto has an abundance of ice that forms large mountains on its surface. The probe also discovered that Pluto has a surprising lack of craters, indicating a fairly fresh surface. To honor Tombaugh, some of his cremated remains were carried along on the New Horizons, on the long journey to Pluto. They continue to travel with New Horizons out into the Kuiper Belt.
When the New Horizons probe passed Pluto last year, we saw that Pluto has an abundance of ice that forms large mountains on its surface. The probe also discovered that Pluto has a surprising lack of craters, indicating a fairly fresh surface. To honor Tombaugh, some of his cremated remains were carried along on the New Horizons, on the long journey to Pluto. They continue to travel with New Horizons out into the Kuiper Belt.
THEMIS I, II, III, IV, and V, a fleet of nearly identical NASA magnetospheric satellites were launched by a Delta 2 rocket on this day (February 17) in 2007. This mission, the Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms (THEMIS) aims to resolve one of the oldest mysteries in space physics, namely to determine what physical process in near-Earth space initiates the violent eruptions of the aurora that occur during substorms in the Earth's magnetosphere....
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