New Horizons
New Horizons is a NASA spacecraft that flew past Pluto in 2015 and Arrokoth in 2019.
New Horizons is a NASA spacecraft launched in January 2006. It was the fastest spacecraft ever launched from Earth at the time, and it used a gravity assist from Jupiter in 2007 to speed towards the outer Solar System.
On 14 July 2015 it made the first flyby of Pluto, revealing mountains of water ice, a vast nitrogen-ice plain named Sputnik Planitia and a hazy blue atmosphere. It also studied Pluto's large moon Charon. On 1 January 2019 it flew past Arrokoth, a small Kuiper Belt object, and found it to be a smooth-joined contact binary.
New Horizons carries a dust counter built by students, which measured tiny dust grains along its route, showing that dust levels in the outer Solar System were higher than expected. It continues to travel outwards, studying the Kuiper Belt from within, and is expected to keep working into the 2040s if its power lasts.
Related terms
Level: Explorer Ages 10 and up