The once planet Pluto, about two-thirds the size of our moon, has always fascinated a lot of people because of its' always having been the most distant object in the solar system. Small, dead, cold - its' average temperature 43°K (-382°F) - its' strange orbit around the sun, has kept this small body very mysterious in the public mind if thought of at all. However this summer on the 14th of July a spacecraft, New Horizon, will go flying by at 23,000 mph and being a good tourist, snapping photographs. The Hubble Space Telescope was turned toward Pluto to see if there might be any space debris that could contribute to a collision with New Horizon which would put an end to the scientific data-gathering. And lo and behold (I like to say) they discovered small moons orbiting the dwarf planet Pluto - five of them to be exact. And (again) it is possible that one of the coldest entitys in the solar system might have a sub-surface ocean. Stay tuned for about six months when, if all goes well, we will have an ocean of data on the only planet ever discovered by an American.
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