08. What is the surface like? Can we send a probe and get a piece of Pluto? (A K2S Question)

From The Space Library

The surface is pretty strange. We know from analyzing the infrared light reflected from Pluto that its surface is a mixture of a lot of different sorts of ice (ordinary water ice, plus frozen nitrogen, methane, and carbon monoxide). Some areas are very bright and ice-covered; other areas are much darker and covered in some sort of dirt. We don't know very much because we don't have any close-up pictures yet. The New Horizons spacecraft that we hope to launch to Pluto in 2006 will take close-up pictures in 2015. Pictures will tell us a lot about Pluto, but the spacecraft won't be able to stop and bring a piece of the planet home. It will be a long time before we are able to do that. Fortunately there's a lot we can learn without bringing any pieces back to Earth.

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Answer provided by Dr. John Spencer, Ph.D.

Question and Answer extracted from the book Kids to Space - by Lonnie Schorer

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