New Horizons
Robotic missionActive
New Horizons completes the first reconnaissance of Pluto and the first close exploration of a Kuiper Belt object
New Horizons launched on January 19, 2006 toward Pluto system, Kuiper Belt, and outer heliosphere. The 1,054 pounds (478 kilograms) spacecraft carried ralph visible/infrared imager, alice ultraviolet spectrograph, lorri camera, rex radio experiment, swap and pepssi particle instruments, and student dust counter. The spacecraft revealed Pluto's nitrogen glaciers, mountains, haze, and active geology, mapped Charon and smaller moons, then showed Arrokoth to be a contact binary assembled gently in the early solar system before continuing heliospheric observations.
Mission photo archive
Reviewed photographs documenting New Horizons. Every image links to its official NASA catalog record.
New Horizons official development-flight photograph
NASA identifies this enhanced-color Pluto and Charon composite as images taken by New Horizons during its July 14, 2015 passage through the Pluto system.
New Horizons Very Best View of Pluto
This frame from a movie is composed of the sharpest views of Pluto that NASA's New Horizons spacecraft obtained during its flyby of the distant planet on July 14, 2015. The pictures are part of a sequence taken near New Horizons' closest approach to Pluto, with resolutions of about 250-280 feet (77-85 meters) per pixel -- revealing features smaller than half a city block on Pluto's diverse surface. The images include a wide variety of spectacular, cratered, mountainous and glacial terrains -- giving scientists and the public alike a breathtaking, super-high resolution window on Pluto's geology. The images form a strip 50 miles (80 kilometers) wide trending from Pluto's jagged horizon about 500 miles (800 kilometers) northwest of the informally named Sputnik Planum, across the al-Idrisi mountains, onto the shoreline of Sputnik Planum and then across its icy plains. They were made with the telescopic Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) aboard New Horizons, over a timespan of about a minute centered on 11:36 UT on July 14 -- just about 15 minutes before New Horizons' closest approach to Pluto -- from a range of just 10,000 miles (17,000 kilometers). They were obtained with an unusual observing mode; instead of working in the usual "point and shoot," LORRI snapped pictures every three seconds while the Ralph/Multispectral Visual Imaging Camera (MVIC) aboard New Horizons was scanning the surface. This mode requires unusually short exposures to avoid blurring the images. http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA20202
Layered Craters and Icy Plains
This highest-resolution image from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft reveals new details of Pluto's rugged, icy cratered plains. Notice the layering in the interior walls of many craters (the large crater at upper right is a good example) -- layers in geology usually mean an important change in composition or event but at the moment New Horizons team members do not know if they are seeing local, regional or global layering. The darker crater in the lower center is apparently younger than the others, because dark material ejected from within -- its "ejecta blanket" -- have not been erased and can still be made out. The origin of the many dark linear features trending roughly vertically in the bottom half of the image is under debate, but may be tectonic. Most of the craters seen here lie within the 155-mile (250-kilometer)-wide Burney Basin, whose outer rim or ring forms the line of hills or low mountains at bottom. The basin is informally named after Venetia Burney, the English schoolgirl who first proposed the name "Pluto" for the newly discovered planet in 1930. The top of the image is to Pluto's northwest. These images were made with the telescopic Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) aboard New Horizons, in a timespan of about a minute centered on 11:36 UT on July 14 -- just about 15 minutes before New Horizons' closest approach to Pluto-- from a range of just 10,000 miles (17,000 kilometers). They were obtained with an unusual observing mode; instead of working in the usual "point and shoot," LORRI snapped pictures every three seconds while the Ralph/Multispectral Visual Imaging Camera (MVIC) aboard New Horizons was scanning the surface. This mode requires unusually short exposures to avoid blurring the images. http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA20200
Launch record
Explore this mission’s launch, including its vehicle, launch site, payload, and outcome.
New Horizons
launch attemptDeep-space attemptcompletedNo reviewed launch image5 connectionsMission dossier
Flight profile, locations, hardware, and outcome in the same reference format used throughout the archive.
Flight profile
- Launch
- January 19, 2006[1]
Places and recovery
Mission record
- Arrival / encounter
- Pluto July 14, 2015; Arrokoth flyby January 1, 2019[1]
- Operator
- NASA and Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory[1]
- Mission type
- Pluto and Kuiper Belt flyby spacecraft[1]
- Vehicle
- New Horizons spacecraft[1]
- Launch vehicle
- Atlas V 551[1]
- Spacecraft mass
- 1,054 pounds (478 kilograms)[1]
- Program
- New Frontiers[1]
- Crew complement
- 0[1]
- Science payload
- Ralph visible/infrared imager, Alice ultraviolet spectrograph, LORRI camera, REX radio experiment, SWAP and PEPSSI particle instruments, and Student Dust Counter[1]
- Outcome
- Active[1]
Trajectory profile
3 sourcesFollow the mission from departure through its flight environment, destination, and final phase. This sequence is not a scale orbital plot.
Mission locations
3 sourcesDocumented surface, test, landing, and recovery locations. Map links use the cited place name or exact coordinates; AstronautAtlas does not geocode or estimate missing positions.
Departure or test site
Launch site
Cape Canaveral or Kennedy Space Center, Florida
Mission Purpose
3 sources- Characterize Pluto and its moons, fly through the Kuiper Belt to study a primordial object, and continue , particle, dust, and heliospheric observations in the distant solar system.
- Complete interplanetary cruise, , pluto july 14, 2015; arrokoth flyby january 1, 2019, and commissioning of New Horizons spacecraft.
- Operate navigation, power, thermal, telecommunications, autonomy, science instruments, and permanent planetary-data archive systems across the full mission.
- The spacecraft revealed Pluto's nitrogen glaciers, mountains, haze, and active geology, mapped Charon and smaller moons, then showed Arrokoth to be a contact binary assembled gently in the early solar system before continuing heliospheric observations.
Planned Flight Plan
3 sources- January 19, 2006
New Horizons launches
Atlas V 551 sends the spacecraft onto its interplanetary trajectory.
- Pluto flyby July 14, 2015; Arrokoth flyby January 1, 2019
Reach the primary encounter phase
New Horizons spacecraft completes the documented arrival, , , landing, or sample-delivery milestone.
- Commissioning and navigation
Establish science operations
Controllers validate spacecraft health, instruments, navigation, communications, autonomy, and archive processing.
- Science operations
New Horizons completes the first reconnaissance of Pluto and the first close exploration of a Kuiper Belt object
The spacecraft revealed Pluto's nitrogen glaciers, mountains, haze, and active geology, mapped Charon and smaller moons, then showed Arrokoth to be a contact binary assembled gently in the early solar system before continuing heliospheric observations.
Mission Timeline
3 sources- January 19, 2006
Launch
New Horizons departs Earth aboard Atlas V 551.
- Pluto flyby July 14, 2015; Arrokoth flyby January 1, 2019
Primary encounter milestone
New Horizons spacecraft reaches its documented planetary or small-body target phase.
- Science milestone
New Horizons completes the first reconnaissance of Pluto and the first close exploration of a Kuiper Belt object
The spacecraft revealed Pluto's nitrogen glaciers, mountains, haze, and active geology, mapped Charon and smaller moons, then showed Arrokoth to be a contact binary assembled gently in the early solar system before continuing heliospheric observations.
- Recorded outcome
Active
New Horizons's observations and returned materials remain part of the permanent planetary archive.