Here's what New Horizons may look like when it flies past Pluto in 2015. Can you spot Pluto's large moon, Charon, in the background? Can you see the Sun, which is very far away?
Click on image for full size
Image courtesy Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute.

New Horizons Mission to Pluto

A spacecraft is going to Pluto! The name of the spacecraft is New Horizons. New Horizons will be the first spacecraft ever to go to Pluto!

Pluto is very, very far away. It will take New Horizons nine years to get to Pluto! New Horizons blasted off in January 2006. But it won't get to Pluto until 2015.

The spacecraft will do a "gravity slingshot" move when it passes Jupiter. That will make the spacecraft go really fast. It will go 47,000 miles per hour (about 21 kilometers per second) for a while.

When New Horizons gets to Pluto it will study the frozen world. It will also study Pluto's big moon Charon. It will take pictures. It will send back readings from its instruments. Those will tell us about Pluto's atmosphere and magnetic field.

New Horizons won't stop after it passes Pluto. It will also study at least one Kuiper Belt Object (KBO). KBOs are giant iceballs that are sort of mini-planets. Most KBOs are even farther away than Pluto!

Last modified February 16, 2007 by Randy Russell.

You might also be interested in:

The Kuiper Belt

You might think that space out near Pluto is pretty empty and lonely. Guess what, it isn't! There are thousands and thousands of giant balls of ice and rock out there. Those giant balls are called Kuiper...more

Results from the New Horizons Jupiter Flyby

The New Horizons spacecraft is on its way to Pluto. Along the way, it flew past the giant planet Jupiter. When the spacecraft flew by Jupiter, Jupiter's strong gravity gave New Horizons a "slingshot...more

Satellites and Robot Spacecraft

Satellites and robot spacecraft are important to space exploration. They let us explore space safely. Click on the link below to learn more about these missions. Canada's first space telescope, MOST, was...more

The Poles of Io

Io is a large moon of Jupiter. Jupiter has four large moons. Io is the closest of the four to Jupiter. Io has hundreds of volcanoes. It has more active volcanoes than any place else in our Solar System....more

New Horizons Mission to Pluto

A spacecraft is going to Pluto! The name of the spacecraft is New Horizons. New Horizons will be the first spacecraft ever to go to Pluto! Pluto is very, very far away. It will take New Horizons nine years...more

ACE Mission Page

Have you ever wondered what you are made of? Where did the elements come from that make up your body? The elements that make up your body are the same elements found on the Earth. Where did those Earth...more

ACE Instrumentation Page

The ACE spacecraft consists of a two-deck irregular octagon, about 1.6 meters (65 inches) across and about 1 meter (40 inches) high. Eight of the scientific instruments which measure a variety of particle...more

Apollo 17

Astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harold Schmitt were the last humans to walk on the Moon, in the final mission of the Apollo space program. Together with Ronald Evans, they lifted off on Dec. 7, 1972 aboard...more

Windows to the Universe, a project of the National Earth Science Teachers Association, is sponsored in part is sponsored in part through grants from federal agencies (NASA and NOAA), and partnerships with affiliated organizations, including the American Geophysical Union, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Earth System Information Partnership, the American Meteorological Society, the National Center for Science Education, and TERC. The American Geophysical Union and the American Geosciences Institute are Windows to the Universe Founding Partners. NESTA welcomes new Institutional Affiliates in support of our ongoing programs, as well as collaborations on new projects. Contact NESTA for more information. NASA ESIP NCSE HHMI AGU AGI AMS NOAA