OPENSPACE 24: The Future of Space Exploration | Page 21

THE FUTURE OF SPACE EXPLORATION
04. Artist concept of Philae’s touchdown. Credit: ESA.
05. Artist concept of NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft encounter with Pluto. Credit: NASA.
06. Astronauts Jerry Ross and James Newman work together on the final of the mission’s three
spacewalks to connect the Unity module to the Russian Zarya module. Credit: NASA.
07. Artist concept of the Trappist-1 system. Credit: NASA.
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A Three-Billion-Mile Journey to Pluto Exoplanet Exploration
After a decade-long journey through the solar system, New This year, 2017, NASA made an unprecedented discovery.
Horizons made its closest approach to Pluto in 2015, making The agency’s Spitzer Space Telescope revealed the first
it the first-ever space mission to explore a world so far from known system of seven Earth-size planets around a single
Earth; its visit revealed the first up-close look at the distant star. Three of these planets are firmly located in the habitable
dwarf planet. zone, the area around the parent star where a rocky planet is
most likely to have liquid water, the key to life as we know it.
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