To Another Year

Let me put aside humanity’s destructive failings for a moment, with the onset of a New Year, to celebrate one of our most fundamental positive traits: our need to know — how things work, how and why we’re here, and if we’re alone. We are destined to explore, discover and learn more about ourselves and our surroundings. I hope and trust that 2016 will bring us yet more knowledge (and more really cool images). We are fortunate indeed.

pluto-psychedelic

Image: New Horizons scientists false color image of Pluto. Image data collected by the spacecraft’s Ralph/MVIC color camera on July 14, 2015 from a range of 22,000 miles. Courtesy: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI.

pluto-mountainousshoreline

Image: Highest-resolution image from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft shows huge blocks of Pluto’s water-ice crust jammed together in the informally named al-Idrisi mountains. The mountains end abruptly at the shoreline of the informally named Sputnik Planum, where the soft, nitrogen-rich ices of the plain form a nearly level surface, broken only by the fine trace work of striking, cellular boundaries. Courtesy: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI.