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Planetary exploration is a historic endeavor and a major focus of NASA. New Horizons is designed to help us understand worlds at the edge of our solar system by making the first reconnaissance of Pluto and Charon - a "double planet" and the last planet in our solar system to be visited by spacecraft. The mission would then visit one or more objects in the Kuiper Belt region beyond Neptune.
New Horizons launched Jan. 19 2006. It passed Jupiter for a gravity boost and scientific studies in February 2007, and will reach Pluto and its moons 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 that vast region, at least a billion miles beyond Neptune's orbit. Sending a spacecraft on this long journey will help us answer basic questions about the surface properties, geology, interior makeup and atmospheres on these bodies.
 Highest Priority
A special panel of the National Academy of Sciences that was formed to advise NASA on a planetary science strategy for the next 10 years (the so-called "Decadal Survey") ranked the exploration of Kuiper Belt Objects, including Pluto, as its highest scientific priority. The New Horizons mission is NASA's way to implement that recommendation.
The Third Region
Generally, New Horizons seeks to understand where Pluto and its moons "fit in" with the other objects in the solar system. We currently classify the planets into groups. Earth, Mars, Venus and Mercury are the "terrestrial" planets, which are mostly rocky objects. In contrast, the "gas giant" planets, which include Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, are dominated by thick, molecular hydrogen atmospheres.
Pluto belongs to a third category that could be called "ice dwarfs." They have solid surfaces but, unlike the terrestrial planets, a significant portion of their mass is icy material (such as frozen water, carbon dioxide, molecular nitrogen, methane and carbon monoxide).
Kuiper Belt Kings
Pluto and Charon are also widely considered to be among the largest objects in the Kuiper Belt, a vast reservoir of icy objects located just outside of Neptune's orbit and extending out to about 50 astronomical units from the Sun. The Kuiper Belt is thought to be the source of most short-period comets - those with orbits shorter than 200 years - so scientists really want to compare the composition and surface properties of Pluto and its moons to those of cometary nuclei.
Pluto and its moons are truly part of the current "frontier" in planetary science. No spacecraft has ever explored them, yet they promise to tell us much about the origins and outskirts of our solar system.
New Horizons: Mission Objectives
- Map surface composition of Pluto and Charon
- Characterize geology and morphology ("the look") 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
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