The first mission to Pluto
New Horizons
New Horizons launched in January 2006 and, after a gravity assist from Jupiter, made humanity's first close flyby of Pluto on 14 July 2015, transforming a fuzzy dot into a world of mountains, glaciers and a hazy blue sky.
It then went on to fly past Arrokoth on 1 January 2019 — the most distant object ever explored up close — and continues to study the Kuiper Belt.
Key facts
- Agency
- NASA / JHUAPL
- Launched
- 2006-01-19
- Launch vehicle
- Atlas V 551
- Power
- Radioisotope thermoelectric generator
- Mission type
- Flyby
- Operator
- Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory for NASA
- Status
- Extended mission in the Kuiper Belt
Where it is now
Loading live position from NASA/JPL Horizons…
Leaving the Solar System; expected to keep operating into the 2040s.
Mission objectives
New Horizons was designed to map the geology and composition of Pluto and its largest moon Charon, study Pluto's atmosphere, and then explore one or more smaller objects in the Kuiper Belt, the icy region beyond Neptune.
The spacecraft
About the size of a grand piano, New Horizons is powered by a single radioisotope generator. It left Earth faster than any spacecraft before it and reached Jupiter in just over a year.
Instruments
Its payload includes the LORRI telescopic camera, the Ralph colour imager and infrared spectrometer, the Alice ultraviolet spectrometer, plasma and particle detectors, and a dust counter built and operated by students.
Discoveries and highlights
At Pluto it found Sputnik Planitia, a vast plain of nitrogen ice that slowly churns, water-ice mountains several kilometres high and a layered atmospheric haze. At Arrokoth it revealed a 'contact binary' of two lobes that gently merged, offering clues to how planets first formed.
Route and timeline
- 2006-01-19Launch, Cape Canaveral
- 2007-02-28Jupiter gravity assist
- 2015-07-14Pluto and Charon flyby
- 2019-01-01Arrokoth flyby
Surprising facts about New Horizons
- New Horizons carries a small portion of the ashes of Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered Pluto in 1930.
- Its data from the Pluto flyby took more than a year to download fully.
- Arrokoth is so far away that it receives about 2,000 times less sunlight than Earth.