SpaceWeather.com -- News and information about meteor showers, s Space news on space exploration and space flight | sen.com NASA Watch astronomy magazine NASA's New Horizons spacecraft is three months from returning to humanity the first-ever close-up images and scientific observations of distant Pluto and its system of large and small moons. "Scientific literature is filled with papers on the characteristics of Pluto and its moons from ground-based and Earth-orbiting space observations, but we've never studied Pluto up close and personal," said John Grunsfeld of the NASA Science Mission Directorate at the agency's headquarters in Washington, D.C. "In an unprecedented flyby this July, our knowledge of what the Pluto system is really like will expand exponentially, and I have no doubt there will be exciting discoveries." The fastest spacecraft ever launched, New Horizons has traveled a longer time and farther away — more than nine years and 3 billion miles (5 billion kilometers) — than any space mission in history to reach its primary target. Pluto's smaller moons also are likely to present scientific opportunities.
Space.com COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — They'll be crammed into a space the size of an RV for more than a year, breathing recycled air, subsisting on dehydrated food and drinking their purified urine. If they die, they'll be freeze-dried in a body bag. And if they survive, they'll have to re-enter Earth's atmosphere at a screaming 8.8 miles (14.2 kilometers) per second. But the applications are already rolling in for the first manned mission to Mars, the project team said Thursday (April 11). Speaking at the National Space Symposium here, members of the Inspiration Mars Foundation described the challenges inherent in launching two humans on a 501-day flyby journey to the Red Planet and back in January 2018, but remained optimistic that those challenges aren't insurmountable. "So far, we haven't come up with any show-stoppers, so that's exciting," said Jane Poynter, president of the Paragon Space Development Corp., which has partnered with Inspiration Mars. Making history "There are a lot of unknowns.