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Pluto's haze layer shows its blue color in this picture taken by the New Horizons Ralph/Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC). The high-altitude haze is thought to be similar in nature to that seen at Saturn’s moon Titan.

Pluto’s Majestic Mountains, Frozen Plains and Foggy Hazes: 15 minutes after its closest approach to Pluto, New Horizons captured this near-sunset view of the rugged, icy mountains and flat ice plains extending to Pluto’s horizon.

New Horizons features in Issue 4 of Astrobiology: The Story of our Search for Life in the Universe. Available at: https://astrobiology.nasa.gov/resources/graphic-histories/

This composite of enhanced color images of Pluto (lower right) and Charon (upper left), was taken by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft as it passed through the Pluto system on July 14, 2015. This image highlights the striking differences between them.

Parallel: For this view, change your focus from the image by looking "through" Ultima Thule (and the screen) and into the distance. This will create the effect of a third image in the middle; try setting your focus on that third image.

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Pluto's haze layer shows its blue color in this picture taken by the New Horizons Ralph/Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC). The high-altitude haze is thought to be similar in nature to that seen at Saturn’s moon Titan.NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI

Pluto’s Majestic Mountains, Frozen Plains and Foggy Hazes: 15 minutes after its closest approach to Pluto, New Horizons captured this near-sunset view of the rugged, icy mountains and flat ice plains extending to Pluto’s horizon.NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI

New Horizons features in Issue 4 of Astrobiology: The Story of our Search for Life in the Universe. Available at: https://astrobiology.nasa.gov/resources/graphic-histories/NASA Astrobiology

This composite of enhanced color images of Pluto (lower right) and Charon (upper left), was taken by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft as it passed through the Pluto system on July 14, 2015. This image highlights the striking differences between Pluto and Charon.NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI

Parallel: For this view, change your focus from the image by looking "through" Ultima Thule (and the screen) and into the distance. This will create the effect of a third image in the middle; try setting your focus on that third image.NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/National Optical Astronomy Observatory

Mission name: New Horizons

New Horizons

The First Mission to the Pluto System and the Kuiper Belt

Launch Date January 19, 2006
Arrival Date July 14, 2015
Mission TypeFlyby
TargetOuter Solar System

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Mission Overview
The New Horizons mission is helping astrobiologists understand worlds at the edge of our solar system by making the first reconnaissance of the Pluto system and venturing deeper into the distant, mysterious Kuiper Belt – a relic of solar system formation.

Relevance to Astrobiology
New Horizons has revealed a plethora of information about the geology, composition and atmosphere of Pluto. In addition, the mission has provided scientists with detailed information about Pluto’s moons. After its visit to Pluto, the mission moved on to continue exploring objects at the distant reaches of our solar system.

Studying primitive icy worlds at the edge of the Solar System addresses major goals of the Astrobiology Program concerning the chemical endowment of all the planets including Earth. Objects in this region of space contain a record of ancient solar system materials. Studying icy objects of the outer Solar System can help us understand what the planet were built from. In addition, it is thought that objects from Solar System’s outer reaches are occasionally pulled closer to the Sun, colliding with planets like Earth and delivering ingredients that could have been necessary for the origins of life as we know it.

On its journey to Pluto, New Horizons also gathered three years worth of data on the solar wind and the space environment of the outer Solar System. This data will help scientists test and improve models of the space environment throughout the Solar System.

Mission news and discoveries

Artist concept of the New Horizons spacecraft.

Assessment of NASA’s NExSS Research Coordination NetworkNovember 28, 2023

NASA’s New Horizons to Continue Exploring Outer Solar System (NASA)October 03, 2023

Save the Date: Josep Comas i Sola International Summer School in AstrobiologyJanuary 11, 2023

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Major mission findings

December 2017 false-color images of KBOs 2012 HZ84 (left) and 2012 HE85 are, for now, the farthest from Earth ever captured by a spacecraft. They're also the closest-ever images of Kuiper Belt objects.

February 08, 2018New Horizons Captures Record-Breaking Images in the Kuiper Belt

New Horizons has used its Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) to observe a number of Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs) and dwarf planets at unique phase angles. The spacecraft has also provided images of centaurs (objects similar in size to asteroids, but similar in composition to comets) at extremely high phase angles to search for forward-scattering rings or dust. In December 2017, the spacecraft captured images of KBOs 2012 HZ84 and 2012 HE85, which were the farthest objects from Earth ever captured by a spacecraft, and the closest-ever images of KBOs up to that point.

Ice (probably frozen nitrogen) that appears to have accumulated on the uplands on the right side of this 390-mile (630-kilometer) wide image drains from Pluto’s mountains onto Sputnik Planum through the 3- to 8- kilometer wide valleys (red arrows).

July 24, 2015Flowing Glaciers

New Horizon’s Ralph imager panorama revealed glaciers flowing into Sputnik Planum. The ice of the glaciers is thought to formed from frozen nitrogen. The features are similar to the frozen streams on the margins of ice caps on Greenland and Antarctica.

Mission Facts

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New Horizons launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Jan. 19, 2006.

New Horizons carries seven scientific instruments and weighs 1,060 pounds.

The New Horizons team selected instruments that not only would directly measure NASA's items of interest, but also provide backup to other instruments on the spacecraft should one fail during the mission.

New Horizons Atlas V launch from Cape Canaveral.

Journey to the Outer Solar SystemNew Horizons leaves Earth

New Horizons launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida aboard an Atlas V rocket.

The Fastest Spacecraft ever LaunchedA three billion mile journey

New Horizons traveled 3 billion miles from Earth to reach the Pluto system in just nine and a half years.

The PayloadNew Horizons' science payload includes seven instruments

Ralph, Alice, Radio Science EXperiment (REX), Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI), Solar Wind Around Pluto (SWAP), Pluto Energetic Particle Spectrometer Science Investigation (PEPSSI), Student Dust Counter ( SDC)

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This illustration shows NASA's Europa mission spacecraft, which is being developed for a launch sometime in the 2020s.

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Artist's concept of the Intelligent Payload Experiment (IPEX) and M-Cubed/COVE-2, two NASA Earth-orbiting cube satellites ("CubeSats") that were launched as part of the NROL-39 GEMSat mission from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base on Dec. 5, 2013.

ExploreIPEX