WASHINGTON (AP) — Students, parents and teachers have long lamented the hours that kids spend taking standardized tests, especially since the introduction of the Common Core academic standards. But just how much time each year?
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — The spacecraft that gave us the first close-up views of Pluto now has a much smaller object in its sights.
NASA's New Horizons was programmed to fire its thrusters Thursday afternoon, putting it on track to fly past a recently discovered, less than 30-mile-wide object out on the solar system frontier. The close encounter with what's known as 2014 MU69 would occur in 2019. It orbits nearly 1 billion miles (1.6 billion kilometers) beyond Pluto.
