Fact Sheet
Pluto at 75
When young Clyde Tombaugh discovered the planet Pluto in 1930, it appeared as a tiny dot on photographic plates. Even with 75 years of technological advances, the modern view of the solar system's most remote planet isn't much better. This map was produced from several Hubble Space Telescope images, and shows only some large bright and dark blotches on Pluto's surface. A spacecraft scheduled for launch in 2006 should give us a much better view when it flies close to Pluto in the next decade. [Credit: NASA/STScI]
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