
NASA extends New Horizons mission through late 2020s
NASA will extend the New Horizons mission through 2028 or 2029, allowing the spacecraft to continue studying its exotic environs far from the sun.
Pluto, once considered the ninth and most distant planet from the sun, is now the largest known dwarf planet in the solar system. It is also one of the largest known members of the Kuiper Belt, a shadowy zone beyond the orbit of Neptune thought to be populated by hundreds of thousands of rocky, icy bodies each larger than 62 miles (100 kilometers) across, along with 1 trillion or more comets.