February 12, 1996
You are a way for the cosmos to know itself, Carl Sagan once said. On your birthday, the cosmos got to know itself a little better.
Pluto Not Yet Explored
Birthday · February 12, 1996
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APOD published February 12, 1996. Full image credits are on the original APOD entry below. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
Cold, distant, Pluto is the only planet in our Solar System which has not been visited by a spacecraft from Earth. The story goes that the legend "Pluto Not Yet Explored" on a US postal stamp depicting the tiny, mysterious world inspired a JPL employee to develop plans for a Pluto flyby. These plans evolved into the current "Pluto Express" mission intended for launch early in the next decade. The type of small, high-tech spacecraft proposed is depicted above in an artist's vision approaching Pluto's mottled surface. A tenuous, transient atmosphere is visible as blue haze beyond the bright limb while Pluto's companion Charon looms in the distance. Images and data from such a mission would be an incredible boon to those studying these bizarre, inaccessible worlds as evidence mounts that Pluto itself is only the largest of many small ice dwarf mini-planets. Some have dubbed the yet unexplored Pluto-Charon system the last "astronomers' planet". Note: Pluto's discoverer, astronomer Clyde Tombaugh, celebrated his 90th birthday on February 4.