Missions and Programs

New Horizons Mission

Citation Formats

General Reference

Space and Astronomy Atlas. "New Horizons Mission." Accessed August 30, 2026. https://dev-space.interactiveatlas.org/missions/new-horizons-mission.

APA Style

Space and Astronomy Atlas. (n.d.). New Horizons Mission. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://dev-space.interactiveatlas.org/missions/new-horizons-mission

BibTeX

@misc{spaceandastronomyatlas-new-horizons-mission,
  author = {Space and Astronomy Atlas},
  title = {New Horizons Mission},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://dev-space.interactiveatlas.org/missions/new-horizons-mission},
  note = {Accessed August 30, 2026}
}

NASA's mission to conduct the first flyby of Pluto and its moons, carried out by the New Horizons spacecraft, aiming to understand the formation of the Pluto system, the Kuiper belt, and the transformation of the early Solar System. It continued to a flyby of the Kuiper belt object Arrokoth in January 2019, the most distant object ever explored by a spacecraft.

Facts

Mission Type

Robotic outer planet flyby mission 1

Launch Date

2006-01-19 1

Outcome

Successful; returned the first close-up images and data from Pluto on 14 July 2015, then continued to the most distant flyby target explored to date, the Kuiper belt object Arrokoth, on 1 January 2019. 1

Cross-Tradition Connections