New HorizonsShedding Light on Frontier Worlds

Launched: Jan 19, 2006

Pluto/Charon: July 14, 2015

Kuiper Belt Objects: 2018 – 2022

End Kuiper Belt Exploration: 2026

The Pluto-Kuiper Belt Mission

This mission will help us understand worlds at the edge of our solar system. It will be the first spacecraft to visit Pluto and Charon a “double planet” system. The mission will then visit at least one Kuiper Belt Object in the region beyond Neptune.

Discovered in 1930, Pluto was long considered our solar system's ninth planet. But after the discovery of similar intriguing worlds deeper in the distant Kuiper Belt, icy Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet. This new class of worlds may offer some of the best evidence about the origins our solar system.

A Hubble Space Telescope image of Pluto and its Moons, Charon, Hydra and Nix. Charon is the largest moon close to Pluto. Hydra is the higher of the two dots to the right of Pluto. Nix is the lowest dot.

This is one of the best images we have of Pluto and Charon by the

Hubble Space Telescope

The New Horizons Mission will be able to greatly improve our knowledge of these objects.

An Artist’s Conception of the Kuiper Belt

There are not many images of the Kuiper belt, yet.

What will this mission tell us?

The mission will be able to answer many basic questions about these unexplored bodies such as:

•How do they look?

•What are they made of?

•What are their atmospheres like?

The mission will also be able to map the surface, study surface composition, and probe the atmosphere to study particles leaving the atmosphere and the affect of the atmosphere on the solar wind.

Pluto

Charon

Here is what we know already…

The Lockheed Martin Atlas 5 was the launch vehicle for New Horizons.

This image shows New Horizons‘ position as of Sept 3, 2010 along its full planned trajectory. The green segment of the line shows where New Horizons has traveled since launch; the red indicates the spacecraft's future path.

This is a montage of New Horizons images of Jupiter and its volcanic moon Io, taken during the spacecraft’s Jupiter flyby in early 2007.

Credit: NASA/JHU/APL