An auction of a car driven by the leader of the recent mission to Pluto will benefit the place where Pluto was discovered.

Dr. Alan Stern is auctioning his 2006 Nissan 350Z coupe to raise funds for Flagstaff's Lowell Observatory, where Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto — formerly classified as a planet, but now considered a "dwarf planet" — in 1930. Stern bought the car the same year the New Horizons mission to the icy world was launched. That probe took nine years to reach Pluto but finally got there in 2015.

The car has just over 77,000 miles on it. As Stern notes in a Lowell news release, this is his "second-fastest vehicle" — that mileage is barely a tenth of the distance New Horizons covered on its first day of flight. At the time of its Pluto flyby, the probe had covered nearly 3 billion miles (and it's still going, on a path that will take it out of the solar system and into interstellar space).

Stern was named one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people in the world in both 2007 and 2016.

Proceeds from the sale will support Lowell's mission of conducting groundbreaking research and teaching the public about science and astronomy. The auction continues through Christmas Eve; click here to place a bid.