🌌 New Horizons
The first mission to explore Pluto up close — and now traveling deep into the Kuiper Belt.
Mission Overview
Launched in January 2006, New Horizons became one of the fastest spacecraft ever sent from Earth. After a 9.5-year journey, it performed a historic flyby of Pluto in July 2015 — transforming what humanity knew about this distant world.
“We came all this way to explore the unknown — and we made Pluto a world again.”
Journey Milestones
- 🚀 2006 — Launch from Cape Canaveral
- 🪐 2007 — Gravity assist flyby of Jupiter (doubling speed)
- ❄ 2015 — Pluto flyby: detailed surface mapping & discovery of ice mountains
- 🛰 2019 — Kuiper Belt Object flyby (Arrokoth — most distant world ever explored)
- 📡 2020–present — Ongoing extended Kuiper Belt exploration
Why New Horizons Matters
🧊 The First Close Look at Pluto
Revealed mountains of frozen water ice and nitrogen plains like Sputnik Planitia.
🧱 Arrokoth — A Frozen Time Capsule
The most primitive solar system object ever visited — unchanged for billions of years.
Top Discoveries
- ❤️ Pluto’s “Heart” region (Sputnik Planitia) reshaped planetary science.
- 🪄 Evidence of possible past or present cryovolcanoes (ice volcanoes).
- 🌀 Pluto's atmosphere is layered and dynamic.
- 👣 Kuiper Belt objects are building blocks of planets — preserved for 4.5 billion years.
Watch & Explore
🔗 Journey to Pluto — NASA Documentary
🔗 Flyover of Pluto (real mission data)