The New Horizons spacecraft has nearly finished its 16-month dispatches from Pluto, Nasa scientists said on Tuesday, as they unveiled new hints of clouds and the craft’s next destination in the distant ring of the solar system. On Tuesday, at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society’s planetary scientists, principal researcher Alan Stern presented new evidence that clouds may form at dusk and dawn on Pluto. Nasa had found seven candidates for clouds, Stern said, each “quite suggestive of possible but rare condensation clouds on Pluto”. Stern said Nasa was only in the earliest stages of talks for a follow-up mission to Pluto, and that any mission would take time. Stern refused to speculate on what New Horizons would find there.

Source: The Guardian October 18, 2016 21:45 UTC