New Horizons
What is New Horizons?
Probes & telescopes· Launched 2006-01-19 – Pluto flyby 2015-07-14 (heliophysics beyond the Kuiper belt). Left Earth faster than any craft before it and revealed Pluto's heart after a 9.5-year cruise. It passed 60 AU in October 2024 and now measures the outer heliosphere.
The orbit of New Horizons at this moment: https://nowsky.org/solar/orbit?fw=probe%3Anewhorizons — replayed live, no login.
Mission timeline
Spacecraft specs
| Launch | 2006-01-19 |
|---|---|
| Pluto flyby | 2015-07-14 |
| Distance | ~66 AU (as of Sept 2026) |
| Mission phase | heliophysics of the outer heliosphere (passed 60 AU in Oct 2024) |
Figures are representative approximations. Distances that change over time are extrapolated from 2026-01-01. Source: compiled from NASA and IAU public data.
Frequently asked
- When did New Horizons launch?
- 2006-01-19.
- How far is New Horizons from Earth?
- ~66 AU (as of Sept 2026).
- In one line, what is New Horizons?
- Probes & telescopes — Left Earth faster than any craft before it and revealed Pluto's heart after a 9.5-year cruise.
Counting Kuiper-belt dust — the belt reaches farther than thought
New Horizons carries a dust detector built by students — the Venetia Burney instrument, named for the girl who named Pluto — which has counted the fine dust striking the spacecraft ever since launch. This dust, thrown off as Kuiper-belt objects collide, was expected to thin out beyond 50 AU, but results published in 2024 showed no decline even at 55 AU.
There are two readings: the Kuiper belt extends much farther out than known, or dust is being pushed outward by the pressure of sunlight. Ground-based surveys finding objects between 60 and 80 AU support the result, and where the solar system's disk actually "ends" has become an open question again. New Horizons will keep counting into the late 2030s, measuring the belt's edge with its own hull.
The mission in depth
New Horizons gave Pluto its face. Launched in 2006 at record speed, it flew nine and a half years to stake everything on one day — 14 July 2015 — and sent home the heart-shaped Sputnik Planitia, flowing nitrogen glaciers, and 3,500-m water-ice mountains.
Aboard rides a portion of Clyde Tombaugh's ashes: the young man who found Pluto on photographic plates in 1930, passing his own world 85 years later.
In 2019 it added Arrokoth, a snowman-shaped contact binary — the farthest world ever visited. It passed 60 AU in October 2024 — twice as far as Pluto was at the flyby — and now focuses on heliophysics measurements of the outer heliosphere.
The crown jewel was Pluto's heart — Sputnik Planitia, a plain of convecting nitrogen ice that repaves itself every few million years, among the youngest surfaces in the solar system. New Horizons went on to snap the first close-ups of a primordial 'snowman,' the Kuiper Belt object Arrokoth, in 2019, and since passing 60 AU in October 2024 has shifted its focus to heliophysics of the outer heliosphere.
Related
Figures are representative approximations. Simulated positions use J2000 mean elements.