Mar 7 1996
From The Space Library
NASA released Hubble Space Telescope (HST) images revealing much of the surface of Pluto for the first time. The Pluto imaging team declared the quality of the pictures better than they had expected. "Hubble has brought Pluto from a fuzzy, distant dot of light, to a world which we can begin to map, and watch for surface changes," remarked Marc W. Buie, a member of the team. The HST took snapshots of nearly the entire surface of the planet during 6.4 days of its rotation. The pictures showed Pluto's complexity, revealing nearly a dozen distinct provinces, and confirming the existence of a polar ice cap, which scientists had suspected but had been unable to verify. NASA officials were optimistic that the images would pave the way for a proposed Pluto flyby mission in the coming years. Pluto remained the only planet not yet visited by a spacecraft.
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