New Horizons
NASA's Pluto explorer — the fastest spacecraft ever launched, now probing the Kuiper Belt at the Solar System's frontier.
Vital statistics
01
Overview
New Horizons launched in January 2006 as the fastest spacecraft ever to leave Earth, crossing the Moon's orbit in just nine hours. After a Jupiter gravity assist in 2007 it cruised for eight years to deliver humanity's first close look at Pluto on 14 July 2015 — revealing nitrogen-ice plains, water-ice mountains, and a surprisingly active dwarf planet. It then flew past the Kuiper Belt object Arrokoth on New Year's Day 2019, the most distant object ever explored up close, and continues outward studying the Kuiper Belt and the heliosphere.
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Exploration
Built and run by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory with SwRI science leadership, New Horizons carries seven instruments including the LORRI telescope and Ralph imager. After Arrokoth it entered a second extended mission, measuring Kuiper Belt dust and charged particles and the brightness of the universe from beyond the zodiacal glow. Its RTG should power operations into the 2030s as it heads toward interstellar space.
Did you know?
It crossed the Moon's orbit just nine hours after launch — the Apollo crews took three days.
It carries an ounce of Clyde Tombaugh's ashes, the astronomer who discovered Pluto in 1930.
Its 2019 Arrokoth flyby set the record for the most distant object ever explored up close.
The full Pluto data set took more than 15 months to downlink at deep-space bit rates.
Pluto's heart-shaped Sputnik Planitia is a sea of slowly convecting nitrogen ice.
It hibernated for much of its cruise to save wear, waking periodically for checkups.
Timeline
- 20062006
Launched Jan 19 on an Atlas V — the fastest human-made object ever to leave Earth.
- 20072007
Jupiter gravity assist boosts its speed and exercises the instruments.
- 20152015
Historic Pluto flyby on July 14 returns the first close-up images.
- 20192019
Flies past Kuiper Belt object Arrokoth on Jan 1 — the most distant flyby ever.