New Horizons is the first scientific investigation to obtain a close look at Pluto and its moon Charon. Scientists hope to find answers to basic questions about the surface properties, geology, interior makeup and atmospheres on these bodies, the last in our solar system to be visited by a spacecraft. The mission could also visit one or more Kuiper Belt objects. New Horizons launched on January 19, 2006. It will swing past Jupiter for a gravity boost & scientific studies in early 2007 and reach Pluto in July 2015. Then, as part of an extended mission, the spacecraft would head deeper into the Kuiper Belt to study one or more of the icy mini-worlds in the region a billion miles beyond Neptune's orbit.

To get to Pluto, which is 3 billion miles from Earth, in just 9.5 years, the spacecraft will speed by the planet at a velocity of about 27,000 miles per hour. The instruments on New Horizons will start taking data on Pluto and Charon months before it arrives. About three months from the closest approach - when Pluto and Charon are about 65 million miles away - the instruments will take pictures and spectra measurements and begin to make the first maps.

The spacecraft will get as close as about 6,000 miles from Pluto and about 17,000 miles from Charon. During the half-hour when the spacecraft is closest to Pluto, it will take close-up pictures in both visible and near-infrared wavelengths. The best images should depict surface features as small as 200 feet across.

Why Pluto? Our solar system has three classes of planets: the rocky worlds (Earth, Venus, Mercury and Mars); the gas giants (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune); and the ice dwarfs of the Kuiper Belt which have solid surfaces but a significant portion of their mass is icy material. There are far more ice dwarf planets than rocky and gas giant worlds combined - yet no spacecraft has been sent to a planet in this class.

A special panel of the National Academy of Sciences was formed in 2001 to advise NASA on a planetary science strategy for the next 10 years. It ranked the exploration of Kuiper Belt Objects, including Pluto, as its highest scientific priority to complete our knowledge of planetary types. As the first mission to investigate this new class of planetary bodies, New Horizons seeks to fill this important gap and round out our knowledge of the planets in our solar system.

Mission Objectives

• Map the surface composition of Pluto and Charon
• Characterize the geology and morphology of Pluto and Charon
• Characterize the neutral atmosphere of Pluto and its escape rate
• Search for an atmosphere around Charon
• Map surface temperatures on Pluto and Charon
• Search for rings and additional satellites around Pluto
• PLUS... conduct similar investigations of one or more Kuiper Belt Objects

A Historic Mission

As the first voyage to a whole new class of planets in the farthest zone of the solar system, New Horizons is a historic mission of exploration. The United States has made history by being the first nation to reach every planet from Mercury to Neptune with a space probe. The New Horizons mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt - the first NASA launch to a "new" planet since Voyager nearly 30 years ago - allows the U.S. to complete the reconnaissance of the solar system.

Mission Management

The New Horizons mission is managed for NASA by The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, MD. The Principal Investigator is Dr. Alan Stern of Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, CO. For more complete information on the mission, visit the New Horizons website.