New Horizons
NASA spacecraft (2006–Present)
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Key Takeaways
- New Horizons is an interplanetary space probe launched as a part of NASA's New Frontiers program.
- A secondary mission contained a flyby and study of one or more other Kuiper belt objects (KBOs) in the decade to follow, where it flew past 486958 Arrokoth in 2019.
- It was engineered by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) and the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), with a team led by Alan Stern.
- On January 19, 2006, New Horizons was launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station by an Atlas V rocket directly into an Earth-and-solar escape trajectory with a speed of about 16.
- It was the fastest (average speed with respect to Earth) human-made object ever launched from Earth.
New Horizons is an interplanetary space probe launched as a part of NASA's New Frontiers program. It was launched in 2006, becoming the first spacecraft to perform a flyby study of the Pluto system in 2015. A secondary mission contained a flyby and study of one or more other Kuiper belt objects (KBOs) in the decade to follow, where it flew past 486958 Arrokoth in 2019. It was the first space probe to ever take high-resolution photographs of Pluto, in 2015.
It was engineered by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) and the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), with a team led by Alan Stern. New Horizons is the fifth space probe to achieve the escape velocity needed to leave the Solar System.
On January 19, 2006, New Horizons was launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station by an Atlas V rocket directly into an Earth-and-solar escape trajectory with a speed of about 16.26 km/s (10.10 mi/s; 58,500 km/h; 36,400 mph). It was the fastest (average speed with respect to Earth) human-made object ever launched from Earth. It is not the fastest speed recorded for a spacecraft, which, as of 2023, is that of the Parker Solar Probe. After a brief encounter with asteroid 132524 APL, New Horizons proceeded to Jupiter, making its closest approach on February 28, 2007, at a distance of 2.3 million kilometers (1.4 million miles). The Jupiter flyby provided a gravity assist that increased New Horizons' speed; the flyby also enabled a general test of New Horizons' scientific capabilities, returning data about the planet's atmosphere, moons, and magnetosphere.
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