Mission Accomplished: Pluto Explored — Article Archive

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Stamp News Publishing's version of the Pluto stamp as it would appear if issued today.

Mission Accomplished: Pluto Explored

by John F. Dunn

At 7:50 a.m. EDT on July 14 NASA’s New Horizons robotic probe to Pluto flies as close as it will come to the dwarf planet, coming within 7,800 miles of Pluto. (Considering that the spacecraft will travel 3 billion miles to reach Pluto, 7,800 miles is extremely close.)

A news release sent out by the USPS one week before the flyby (see the link at the end of this article) provides a fascinating connection with a 1991 stamp issue—the set of ten Space Exploration stamps, Sc. 2568-77 (photo above). As you can see, in each of the other nine stamps, the spacecraft involved with . . .

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