Group items tagged

Mission Overview: Why Go to Pluto ? 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. Then, as part of an extended mission, New Horizons would visit one or more objects in the Kuiper Belt region beyond Neptune.

The New Horizons spacecraft, which launched in January of 2006, will get within 6,000 miles of Pluto on July 14, 2015.