New Horizons: Pluto and Beyond

  1. NASA’s New Horizons launched in 2006 on a mission to explore Pluto and the Kuiper Belt.
  2. It became the first spacecraft to visit Pluto, flying by on July 14, 2015.
  3. The probe revealed Pluto’s icy mountains, glaciers, and a heart-shaped plain called Tombaugh Regio.
  4. It showed Pluto’s atmosphere is escaping into space like a comet’s tail.
  5. New Horizons also studied Pluto’s moons, especially the largest, Charon.
  6. After Pluto, it flew past Arrokoth in 2019—the most distant object ever visited.
  7. The spacecraft travels at over 32,000 mph, one of the fastest ever launched.
  8. It carries some of Clyde Tombaugh’s ashes, the discoverer of Pluto.
  9. New Horizons continues to send back data from the outer solar system.
  10. Its mission helps scientists understand how icy worlds formed at the solar system’s edge.