PHOTOS: NASA (5); PR. ILLUSTRATIONS: wdw Grafi k; Fotolia.The enormous amount of time it
took to get there was not the result
of dawdling: When the probe was
fi rst launched into space aboard an
Atlas V rocket on January 19, 2006,
it had achieved a speed of almost
37,000 miles per hour—the fastest
spacecraft ever launched to date. It
passed the Moon after nine hours.
After 78 days it reached the orbit of
Mars and reached Jupiter after little
more than a year. But from then on,
the journey was a test of patience:
Saturn in 2008, Uranus in 2011, and
fi nally Neptune in 2014—all in a path
that was practically a straight line.
Then in March of 2015 New Horizons
pressed on in its nearly 3-billion-mile
voyage away from Earth through the
vast darkness of a universe that can
be colder than -350°F. The piano-size
probe had safely traveled 32 times
the distance from Earth to the Sun.
Contact with the equipment became
severely delayed: It took four hours
to transmit each command via radio.
Even while still a few million miles
away, the probe’s instruments were
deployed and the fi rst close-ups of
Pluto were transmitted to the Earth.
FEBRUARY/MARCH 2007
After a year, Jupiter has been reached.
The gravitational pull of the gas giant
accelerates the probe to 51,000 mph.JANUARY/
FEBRUARY 2006
The launch window is open
for 35 days, if Pluto is to be
reached in “only” 10 years.LIFE MAY
EVEN BE
POSSIBLE
N PLUTO
the spaceship accelerate, brake, or
rotate in any desired direction. The
fi nal mission will occur on January 1,
2019, when the probe completes a
fl yby of a small object named 2014
MU69 that’s located about 1 billion
miles beyond Pluto. After 2025, the
probe will have run out of juice and
will turn into an abandoned object.
Assuming the probe’s path is clear,
it could keep drifting though space
for millions of years.IS PLUTO HIDING AN OCEAN?
Regardless of what the probe fi nds
next, the mission’s most important
feature is still the “King of Kuiper.”
Alan Stern expects big surprises, as
Pluto is often underestimated. “Life
may even be possible there,” says
Stern, the head of the New Horizons
mission. In 2011, researchers found
that under the ex-planet’s icy shell a
liquid ocean heated by radioactive
potassium could circulate. Organic
molecules could explain the strange
colorful spots found on the coarse-
grained Hubble Telescope images.
Now a more detailed picture of the
ex-planet is emerging thanks to all
the data collected during the fl yby
and the continued research into this
mysterious celestial body. Perhaps
New Horizons will start a revolution:
to resurrect a fallen planet...ALAN STERN, PRINCIPAL
INVESTIGATOR OF NASA’S
NEW HORIZONS MISSIONThey were no more than a few white
spots, but they proved that the New
Horizons probe is functional and in
position to pursue its unimaginably
distant goal. “The spacecraft is in
spectacularly good shape,” mission
leader Alan Stern had confi rmed. At
exactly 11:49 UTC on July 14, 2015,
the probe passed within 8,000 miles
of Pluto—about half the distance at
which navigation satellites orbit the
Earth. In contrast with the satellites,
New Horizons only fl ew by like a spy
plane once, accurately measuring
and mapping Pluto’s surface and
atmosphere using seven integrated
instruments. The collected data set
was so large that full transmission to
Earth took 16 months at 700 bytes
per second. “We cannot make a full
stop or swing into orbit because the
gravitational pull of Pluto is so low,”
says New Horizons co-investigator
and NASA scientist Fran Bagenal.
However the $700 million mission
is still not fi nished: “We’ll fl y directly
into the Kuiper belt,” says Bagenal.
And then the engineers’ hard work
begins in earnest. That’s because,
instead of just allowing the probe to
fl y onward, they’ll need to use the
remaining 100 to 130 pounds of fuel
to steer toward one of the more than
1,000 known objects in the Kuiper
belt. A total of 16 thrusters will make