Pluto Revealed

Just 15 minutes after its closest approach to Pluto on July 14, 2015, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft looked back toward the sun and captured this near-sunset view of the rugged, icy mountains and flat ice plains extending to Pluto's horizon. The New Horizons mission is helping us understand worlds at the edge of our solar system by making the first reconnaissance of the dwarf planet Pluto and by venturing deeper into the distant, mysterious Kuiper Belt — a relic of solar system formation.

The Journey

Atlas V rocket carrying the New Horizons spacecraft. — On Jan. 19, 2006, Clouds part as NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft roars into the blue sky after an on-time liftoff at 2 p.m. EST aboard an Atlas V rocket from Complex 41 on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

New Horizons launched on Jan. 19, 2006; it swung past Jupiter for a gravity boost and scientific studies in February 2007, and conducted a six-month-long reconnaissance flyby study of Pluto and its moons in summer 2015, culminating with Pluto closest approach on July 14, 2015. As part of an extended mission, the spacecraft is now heading farther into the Kuiper Belt to examine another of the ancient, icy mini-worlds in that vast region, at least a billion miles beyond Neptune's orbit.

Sending a spacecraft on this long journey is helping us to answer basic questions about the surface properties, geology, interior makeup and atmospheres on these bodies.

New Science

The National Academy of Sciences has ranked the exploration of the Kuiper Belt — including Pluto — of the highest priority for solar system exploration. Generally, New Horizons seeks to understand where Pluto and its moons "fit in" with the other objects in the solar system, such as the inner rocky planets (Earth, Mars, Venus and Mercury) and the outer gas giants (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune).

Mountains of ice along a portion of smoother ice planes on Pluto’s surface. — In this highest-resolution image from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, great blocks of Pluto’s water-ice crust appear jammed together in the informally named al-Idrisi mountains.

Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, belong to a third category known as "ice dwarfs". They have solid surfaces but, unlike the terrestrial planets, a significant portion of their mass is icy material.

A close-up look at these worlds from a spacecraft promises to tell an incredible story about the origins and outskirts of our solar system.The images and data gathered by New Horizons is allowing us to explore — for the first time — how ice dwarf planets like Pluto and Kuiper Belt bodies have evolved over time.

The Need to Explore

As the first voyage to a whole new class of planets in the farthest zone of the solar system, New Horizons is a historic mission of exploration. The United States has made history by being the first nation to reach every planet from Mercury to Neptune with a space probe. The New Horizons mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt — the first NASA launch to a "new" planet since Voyager nearly 40 years ago — allows the U.S. to complete the initial reconnaissance of the solar system.

A Team Approach

Part of the New Horizons team celebrating the spacecraft's flyby of Pluto. — Members of the New Horizons science team react to seeing the spacecraft's last and sharpest image of Pluto before closest approach later in the day, Tuesday, July 14, 2015 at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland.

The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, designed, built, and operates the New Horizons spacecraft and manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate.

Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado is the principal investigator. SwRI is responsible for science payload operations, data reduction and archiving, and participates in the science team.

The mission team also includes KinetX, Inc. (navigation team), Ball Aerospace Corporation, the Boeing Company, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Stanford University, Lockheed Martin Corporation, University of Colorado, the U.S. Department of Energy and a number of other firms, NASA centers and university partners.

NASA's New Horizons mission is part of the New Frontiers Program managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.