(Source: Sonoma State University) With NASA's flyby of Pluto, the United States became the first nation to visit every planet in the solar system. Sonoma State University physics and astronomy professor Thomas Targett weighs in on the new images and their importance to space exploration. The New Horizons spacecraft left Florida nine years ago and travelled 3 billion miles to capture images of the outermost planet in our solar system. The photos take more than four hours to transmit back to Earth at light speed, and they are the most detailed images of Pluto and its largest moon, Charon. The flyby occurs on the 50th anniversary of Mariner 4's flyby of Mars, which yielded the first detailed...
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