OPINION: What New Horizons reveals about Pluto

Unless you have been, well, on another planet, you know that July 14 was the date of closest approach to Pluto by the New Horizons spacecraft, which has now sent back unprecedented images from this historic encounter.

Passing Pluto at barely 7,750 miles (or 12,400 kilometers for savvy metric readers), the seven experiments on the New Horizons spacecraft are busily gathering extensive data on Pluto and its five known moons, Charon, Styx, Nix, Kerberos and Hydra.