The first detailed glimpse of Pluto was a stunner: A mottled, multicolored orb, shimmering 3 billion miles from Earth. It has craters, “great mounds,” a mysterious dark belt along the equator – even suggestions of snowfall.
The photos came from the NASA spacecraft New Horizons, which has reached the outskirts of the solar system after a nine-year journey. By almost any measure, the mission is already a success, and serves as a fitting capstone for the era of exploration that the U.S. began half a century ago.
The next space age will probably look quite different, but it will be an exhilarating one all the same.
The U.S. is now the only country to have visited every planet in the solar system (Pluto’s unconscionable downgrading to a “dwarf planet” notwithstanding).
Interest in space nowadays is increasingly commercial. Satellite startups are pursuing intriguing new business opportunities. At the same time, the thrill of exploration remains. The possibility of life existing elsewhere in the universe looks increasingly plausible.
And NASA’s Kepler mission has discovered hundreds of new planets beyond the solar system – some of them very much like our own. Space hasn’t looked this interesting in a generation.
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