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paying a visit to pluto presented by

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science at nasa

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at this very moment one of the fastest

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spacecraft ever launched nasa's new

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horizons is hurtling through the void at

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nearly 1 million miles per day

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launched in 2006 it has been in flight

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longer than some missions last and still

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has four more years of travel to go

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new horizons is headed for the lonely

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world of pluto on the outer edge of the

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solar system although astronomers now

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call pluto a dwarf planet it's actually

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a large place about 5 000 miles around

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at the equator says alan stern principal

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investigator for the mission

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and it's never been explored

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indeed no spacecraft has ever visited

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pluto or any dwarf planet in the outer

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solar system

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this is a whole new class of worlds says

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stern

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to understand the solar system we need

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to understand worlds like pluto

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pluto is a resident of the kuiper belt a

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vast region beyond the orbit of neptune

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stern believes the kuiper belt contains

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a thousand dwarf planets or more a whole

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zoo of them

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dwarf planets are in fact the most

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numerous class of planets in the solar

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system and probably in the whole

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universe

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pluto is a world of mysteries for one

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thing stern wonders what are the

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molasses colored patches on pluto's

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surface seen by the hubble space

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telescope

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some scientists think that they could be

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deposits of primordial organic matter

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new horizon spectrometers will help us

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identify the kinds of organic molecules

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on pluto

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we expect to find something pretty

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interesting

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hubble recently contributed more

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intrigue by spotting a new moon circling

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pluto bringing the total to four

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composite hubble images of pluto now

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resemble a miniature planetary system

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new horizons will hunt for even more

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moons as it approaches the dwarf planet

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to aid in the investigations new

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horizons is carrying one of the largest

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and highest resolution interplanetary

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telescopes ever flown it's called lori

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short for long-range reconnaissance

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imager

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at closest approach to pluto lori can

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resolve details almost as well as the

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spy camera

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the view will be incredible if we flew

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this instrument over earth at the same

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altitude as we planned to fly over pluto

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we would see individual buildings and

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their shapes

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what will we see on pluto

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some researchers predict icy geysers

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like the ones on neptune's moon triton

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some say we could see those surface

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deposits of organic material

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stern says simply there could be all

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kinds of surprises it's a first

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exploration of a new kind of planet

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new horizons is scheduled to reach pluto