This is CNN 10 your 10 minute objective.

Look at news events happening around the world.

I'm Carla Zeus.

We've been talking a lot about the U.

S presidential election that's now 19 days away.

But it's not just the presidential candidates who are on the ballot today.

We're having a look at what else Americans are voting for and how things stand going into that vote.

We'll start with the U.

S House of Representatives, congressmen and women served terms that last two years.

The last election the midterm election was in 2018.

So that means that all 435 voting seats are up for grabs.

Currently, the House is controlled by members of the Democratic Party.

They hold the majority of 232 seats.

Members of the Republican Party hold 197 seats.

One member of the House is a libertarian, and there are five vacancies from seats that became available this year but haven't been filled yet.

In the other chamber, the U.

S Senate members served terms that last six years, this time around 35 voting seats a little more than a third of them are up for grabs.

Currently, the Senate is controlled by Republicans, who have 53 seats.

Democrats have 45 seats, and two independents who vote with the Democrats have two seats, while a lot of the focus is on the candidates for the executive branch.

What happens with the congressional elections can determine how easy or difficult it is for presidents to enact the policies they pushed for on the campaign trail.

And the vote isn't just about the executive and legislature.

There are a number of state and local elections taking place on November 3rd, as well as dozens of ballot measures, laws or issues that voters are allowed to decide directly.

So a lot about the nation.

It's states and its communities can be decided when Americans go to the polls.

Next up, can humans put something in the clouds to make it rain more?

That's one aspect of cloud seeding, and some people are asking that question in light of the Western wildfires we've told you about off the 78 major fires now burning in America, the National Interagency Fire Center says 19 of them are in California.

Four million acres have burned there in 2020 and the forecast for Northern California says low humidity and high winds will make conditions more dangerous through Friday.

So is this a problem that cloud seeding could solve?

The answer isn't known.

There are concerns about the environmental impact of it and whether it makes financial sense to try it.

But there is science behind it.

It's always a few guys air creating clouds out of nowhere.

You actually target storm systems.

If there's no clouds in the sky that have any moisture in them, then way can't do anything.

But we can do is tap into what's there and assist Mother Nature.

Kind of like a steroid kick for the clouds or something way in all of its forms.

Water powers our very existence.

A droplets epic journey from sky to see is an elegant loop that sustains all life on this planet.

But today about a billion people are living in water scarce areas in the United States.

There's California, where in one single year a historic drought cost the state over 10,000 jobs and nearly $2 billion in lost revenue.

But what if we could hack into the water cycle and unlock more precious water from the clouds.

A decades old technology long shunned by science may hold the key.

Since the 1946 experiments of Dr Vincent Schaefer, we have known that some clouds can be modified through seeding to yield additional precipitation.

What exactly is cloud seeding?

Cloud seeding is really an enhancement of the natural precipitation process, so basically you're just making the storm or efficient getting more moisture out of it exactly at To do that, pilots target clouds full of moisture and eject small amounts of an inert chemical.

Then the water in the cloud condenses around the new particles and gets heavy, falling to the ground as precipitation.

Brian Kindred is one of the company's pilots.

He steers right into the heart of storms to fire off a special kind of pyrotechnics.

And what's inside of these guys?

It's a silver iodide mixture, the ideas that will be above some liquid water.

And as it's falling through, it'll turn into snow.

Silicon fall out of the cloud.

Since the 19 forties, people have been seeding clouds and watching the effects with their own eyes.

But there's always been something missing.

The cold, hard scientific evidence to back it up.

In 2017 the National Science Foundation funded a study to determine cloud seatings effectiveness.

Weather Modification International provided the planes.

A team of scientists set out into the Idaho mountains with Doppler radars and state of the art weather stations to record what happens on the ground when planes above our cloud seeding radar images show how ice crystals formed in the clouds in the exact pattern that weather modifications pilots were flying.

But there's still questions about its long term effects.

How does making it rain in Idaho affect what happens?

Estate over, who owns the precious water in those clouds and the effects of silver iodide on the environment are still debated.

For now, national weather bodies have yet to endorse the practice of cloud seating.

Again, man looks to his own efforts to increase the flow of water.

Andi, Once again, clouds are forming in the mountains.

Yeah, yeah, 12th trivia.

Which of these space stories made headlines in 2006?

Was that the last shuttle mission demotion of Pluto's Kepler Mission launch or Rosetta comet landing?

In 2006?

The International Astronomical Union downgraded Pluto's to dwarf planet status.

Theo New Horizon spacecraft has traveled for more than nine years, covering over three billion miles to give us our closest view yet of Fluto.

Launched January 19th, 2000 and six from Cape Canaveral.

Piano sized spacecraft is the first to visit the icy world.

Discovered more than 80 years ago when astronomer Clyde Tombaugh first Salt Ludo on February 18th, 1930 he only saw Pinpoint of light.

Tomba was using the best technology.

He had a telescope at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona.

Flash forward to 1994.

The Hubble Space Telescope, floating high above hearse atmosphere, snapped this image of Pluto's and its largest moon, Sharon.

Then in 1996 Hubble gave us this.

A mosaic of images snap between 2002 and 2003 was assembled in 2010 to give us the most detailed view of Pluto's.

At that time, Pluto's isn't the final destination for the New Horizon spacecraft.

The probe will keep flying heading deeper into space to explore a region scientists think is filled with hundreds of small, icy objects.

But it's the larger, though still not large enough to be a planet icy object named Fluto.

That's the subject of our next report.

Scientists have been studying pictures and info gathered from the New Horizon spacecraft in 2015.

They used them to create high resolution climate simulations to try to learn more about Pluto's environment.

And their findings, which were just published in the journal Nature Communications, indicate that Pluto's has ice capped mountain peaks just like we do on Earth.

They don't look the same.

The Isis chemical composition apparently gives it a reddish color, and researchers say the ice doesn't form the same way as it does on Earth, at least according to their climate simulations.

They believe there's methane gas around Pluto's that's more concentrated, and it's higher altitudes.

And that's where it forms frost on the dwarf planet's mountaintops without the need for wind or precipitation.

Pluto's is 40 times farther from the sun than Earth, and no one's going skiing there.

So why does this matter?

A lead study author says the new findings show us there's a lot happening in space that we don't know about, and that even though a planet might have a mountainous landscape like the Alps, for instance, the climate can be very different from Earth's.

So scientists say studying these climates gives us more perspective on our own.

$700 million New Horizons mission continues.

The Guinness World record for longest slip and slide is 611 m, or just over 2000 ft.

This home made one measures 100 m, but it may be the fastest and Idaho college student named Joel.

Dustin built it over the summer, using a lot of painters, tarps and a garden hose.

His time to cover the downhill distance was 10.4 seconds, and that may earn him a world record for fastest speed on a slipping slide, Joel topped out at 32 MPH.

But why stop with a tarpaulin when you could have a tarp will win.

The end may leave you muddier.

Your friends might think you're nuttier.

The sun might make you right here, but racing down a gutter on a surface slick is butter.

Even if you have to crash could help you make us.

I tried to slide a few puns in there, but I don't know, maybe I'm slipping up.

Coral Jesus, hey at youtube dot com slash CNN 10.

We heard from Gala Show High School.