New Horizons

Spacecraft· NASAactive

New Horizons — flew past Pluto in 2015 and Arrokoth in 2019; now exploring the Kuiper belt.

Open in 3D viewSee New Horizons in the live, interactive 3D map

Key facts

Current speed

13.6 km/s

Distance from Sun

65.4 AU

Status

Active

Launched

2006

Mission & specifications

Mission

Operator: NASA
Launched: January 19, 2006
Status: Active

Trajectory

Current speed: 13.6 km/s
Distance from the Sun: 65.4 AU
Distance from Earth: 64.6 AU

Cost & funding

Program cost: $7.80 × 10⁸ USD

Mission

New Horizons gave humanity its first close look at Pluto, the last of the classical planets to be explored. Launched on 19 January 2006 as the fastest spacecraft ever sent from Earth, the piano-sized, nuclear-powered probe swung past Jupiter for a gravity boost in 2007 and then coasted for eight years across the Solar System. On 14 July 2015 it swept just 12,500 kilometres above Pluto, and the dim, distant speck resolved into a startlingly complex world: a vast plain of nitrogen ice shaped like a heart, mountains of water ice, a layered blue haze, and hints of an ocean buried beneath the frozen crust — overturning the assumption that so small and cold a body would be geologically dead. Its companion Charon proved just as dramatic, scarred by deep canyons and capped with a red polar stain. With its primary goal achieved, New Horizons pressed deeper into the Kuiper belt, and on 1 January 2019 flew past a tiny, pristine object now named Arrokoth — at the time the most distant world ever explored at close range. Arrokoth turned out to be a gently joined pair of lobes, a 'snowman' frozen since the Solar System's birth, offering a rare glimpse of how the first planetary building blocks came together. Now well beyond fifty times the Earth–Sun distance and still healthy, New Horizons is one of only five craft on a path out of the Solar System. It continues to study the outer heliosphere, measure the faint glow of the distant universe, and search the dark for one more Kuiper-belt target.

2006The fastest launch yetLaunch
An Atlas V sends New Horizons toward Pluto at the highest Earth-departure speed ever recorded.
2007Jupiter gravity assistFlyby
A swing past Jupiter boosts the probe's speed and trims years from the journey.
2015Pluto flybyFlyby
The first spacecraft to reach Pluto reveals nitrogen-ice plains, water-ice mountains and a hazy atmosphere.
2019Arrokoth flybyFlyby
New Horizons explores the most distant object ever visited, a pristine Kuiper-belt 'snowman'.
202150 astronomical units from the SunMilestone
The probe passes fifty times the Earth–Sun distance, deep in the Kuiper belt and still healthy.
2023Extended for outer-heliosphere scienceMilestone
With the planets behind it, the mission is extended to study the solar wind's edge and the faint glow of the distant universe.

Images

The New Horizons spacecraft — NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/J. da Silva/NASA (CC BY 4.0) · Wikimedia Commons

Pluto in true colour, imaged by New Horizons (14 July 2015) — NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI (public domain) · Wikimedia Commons

Nap Time for New Horizons: NASA Spacecraft Enters Hibernation — NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute · NASA Image Library

Flying Past Pluto Animation — NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute · NASA Image Library

A Moon over Pluto Animation — NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute · NASA Image Library

Pluto Haze — NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute · NASA Image Library

Pluto Mysterious, Floating Hills — NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute · NASA Image Library

Pluto Solar Occultations — NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute · NASA Image Library

Images from open archives · credit shown per image