New Horizons launch — to Pluto
On 19 January 2006 New Horizons left Earth faster than any spacecraft before it, bound for Pluto. Nine and a half years later, in 2015, it sent back the first close view of Pluto's heart-shaped ice plain.
Available views: Orbit ✓ · Sky — (not visible in the sky)
The story
On 19 January 2006 New Horizons lifted off from Florida on an Atlas V rocket. It left Earth faster than any spacecraft launched before it. It crossed the Moon's orbit in about nine hours. The crewed Apollo spacecraft had needed about three days to cover the same distance.
The speed came from keeping the spacecraft small and light. New Horizons weighed 478 kg with its fuel, and it is about the size of a grand piano. A light spacecraft on a powerful rocket can be thrown much faster. Pluto is so far away that speed was the only practical way to save years of travel.
When it left, Pluto was still counted as the ninth planet. Seven months after launch, in August 2006, the International Astronomical Union reclassified Pluto as a dwarf planet. The mission carried on unchanged. On board are about 30 grams of the ashes of Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered Pluto in 1930, so part of the discoverer travelled to the world he had found.
In February 2007 New Horizons swung past Jupiter and used its gravity to gain another 4 km per second. That cut three years off the trip. For most of the long cruise that followed, the spacecraft slept in a low-power mode. Then on 14 July 2015 it passed 12,500 km from Pluto's surface and took the first close-up pictures of this small world.
Mission goals
New Horizons was the first spacecraft to see Pluto up close. Before it, even the best telescopes showed Pluto as little more than a blurry dot. From the 1960s to the 1980s, the Mariner, Pioneer and Voyager probes gave us first close looks at the planets one by one, and New Horizons added Pluto to that list of first encounters.
The 2015 images surprised many scientists. Pluto has a wide plain of nitrogen ice that slowly flows, tall mountains made of water ice, and a blue haze stacked in many thin layers. Some areas have very few craters, which means their surface has been renewed quite recently. The pictures showed that even a small, cold world can still be changing today.
The mission did not end at Pluto. In 2019 it studied Arrokoth, a small object in the Kuiper belt even farther away. The Kuiper belt is a region of icy bodies beyond Neptune, and scientists think its members keep material from the time the solar system formed almost unchanged.
Mission chronology and background
Pluto missions were cancelled twice in the 1990s: Pluto Fast Flyby and Pluto Kuiper Express. NASA then asked for new proposals, and New Horizons was selected in November 2001. Its funding was still at risk after that, but in 2003 it was ranked first in the priority list drawn up by American planetary scientists, and the project went ahead.
The launch date was tight. To swing past Jupiter and gain speed, the spacecraft had to leave within about 23 days in January 2006. Missing that window meant no Jupiter flyby and an arrival at Pluto five to six years later. In the end the launch slipped several times because of weather and technical problems before it finally went on 19 January.
Scientists had another reason to hurry. Pluto had passed its closest point to the Sun in 1989 and was moving farther away. As it grows colder, they worried, its thin nitrogen atmosphere could freeze and settle onto the ground. When New Horizons arrived in 2015, the atmosphere was still there.
New Horizons makes its electricity from the heat of decaying plutonium. Near Pluto the sunlight is about 1,000 times weaker than at Earth, so solar panels could not supply useful power. The output fell from about 245 W at launch to about 200 W at Pluto, and it keeps slowly dropping. In the 2030s the power is expected to become too low to run the radio transmitter.
Other milestones of this mission
Where to see it — sky and simulator
As of spring 2026, New Horizons was about 64 AU from the Sun, or 64 times the Earth–Sun distance, in the direction of Sagittarius. It is far too small and distant for any telescope to see. Select the spacecraft in the orbit view to see its current position, its almost straight path since leaving Earth, and the point where it passed Jupiter.
The orbit view replay shows the launch in January 2006, the Jupiter pass in 2007 and the arrival at Pluto in 2015 in order. At higher playback speed the path can be seen bending slightly at Jupiter as the spacecraft speeds up. That is the moment Jupiter's gravity flung it onward.
Pluto itself is very faint, about 14th magnitude. An amateur needs a telescope of roughly 20 to 30 cm and a dark sky to find it, and even then it looks like a tiny star. Select Pluto in the sky view to see where it currently sits, in the direction of Capricornus.
See this for yourself — replay the moment in the orbit view
FAQ
How fast was it?
It left Earth faster than any spacecraft before it. It crossed the Moon's orbit in about nine hours, a trip that took the Apollo spacecraft about three days.
Why did it go past Jupiter?
Jupiter's gravity added 4 km per second to its speed, which brought its arrival at Pluto three years earlier.
Is it connected to Pluto losing planet status?
Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet in August 2006, seven months after launch. The mission plan did not change.
Where is it now?
As of spring 2026 it was about 64 AU from the Sun, toward Sagittarius, still studying the outer solar system.
Related
- New Horizons at Pluto
- Pioneer 10 launch
- Voyager 1 launch
- New Horizons — object index
- Pluto — object index
Times and figures are approximate — verify with official sources when planning travel. Simulation uses J2000 mean elements.