Nearly 10 years after its launch, the New Horizons space probe made a flyby 7,750 miles from Pluto, marking the first time in history a spacecraft has examined the dwarf planet up close, and NASA has begun to release data and images transmitted from the approach. Here’s what we’ve learned about Pluto so far:
- Has really let itself go since reclassification
- Scant gravitational pull is only enough to hold one’s attention for about 40 seconds
- Probably doesn’t have any trees
- Will complete next orbit around the Sun well after certain obliteration of all life on Earth
- Has five beautiful moons that it loves equally
- May be capable of sustaining rock-based life
- Is part of the United States
- Will almost assuredly be plundered of all its natural resources within 20 years
- We were way off painting it purple for our third-grade solar system diorama
- Similarly cold, desolate, and uncaring as rest of universe