We need a little connection to Objectivism here...so I'll say hooray for science and reason!! (I'm also an aerospace engineer, aka rocket scientist, so I have extra appreciation for this.)
We could have a discussion about the ethics of funding sources...which probably won't have much debate. Nothing about NASA's charter about defending individual rights, running courts, or defending the country.

Ever since I was a school boy back during the 50s, I've always wondered what Pluto actually looked like.
Now I have lived to see it!
Ice mountains? How cool!
Oops, that pun was not intended. LOL!

Cool. I still think it should be a planet.

Mixed feelings about projects like this. On the one hand it's a lot of tax money (ie OUR money) being spent, and there might be better ways to spend it (like paying down the debt).

On the other hand, I think the long-term survival of the human race is going to involve moving off this one rock, and eventually out of the solar system. If we last that long.

I wish the private space companies were showing more potential. I'd really like to see the moon and Mars colonized privately, but private companies operate on payback, and it's a lot of money to invest for a long period of time before that is even possible.

This may be a case of "if the government doesn't do it, it won't get done". Then we have to decide if we really want it bad enough.

Interesting and totally cool. One thing that needs to be resolved is whether or not Pluto is a "captured" entity or not.

It seems it lost it's planetary status recently because of it's unusual orbit suggesting it was not part of the evolved solar system. And yet, they are saying it is 4.5 billion years old, essentially that of earth and the solar system at 4.6 billion. How do they even know its age, if it might not be part of the original solar system?

My wife used to work in the Planetary Division of the USGS at Flagstaff, Az drawing airbrushed maps of quadrangles on Mars, and Jupiter's moons from the Voyager data. It was great attending some of the talks on the evolving thinking of planetary geology and origins. I can just hear them now going at it with all this new data.

Shared this article on FB. If they're going to yank my money away, I feel good knowing this is being done with it. I just wish that these guys were doing this privately.

Thank God NASA didn't put the fuel source for this out for bid and insisted on using only Pluto brand Plutonium!

You know you can alway go to the mission team's own page to get the latest news : http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/new...

A mildly interesting bit of science, but I don't see that it's anywhere near being worth extorting billions of dollars from taxpayers to pay for it.

A step into the cold ocean of space, and new wonders are apparent. This is one of the reasons for humanity's existence.