Photo by Ben Cooper of LaunchPhotography.com
New Horizons: 7 Years Ago Today... At 11:00 AM, Pacific Standard Time on January 19, 2006, NASA commenced its long-awaited journey to explore Pluto when the New Horizons spacecraft was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. 7 years later, New Horizons is 'only' 673 million miles from the dwarf planet...having traveled 2.4 billion miles since it left Earth in 2006. Today, the grand piano-sized probe is a little more than a year away from crossing Neptune's orbit (which will take place on August 25, 2014—25 years to the day that Voyager 2 made its historic flyby of that gas giant). From there on, New Horizons will officially be in 'Pluto space'...with observations of the former 9th planet from the Sun expected to begin in January of 2015. The big day itself, the closest approach to Pluto, is targeted for July 14, 2015. Can't wait!
ABOVE: The green line marks the path traveled by the New Horizons spacecraft as of
11:00 AM, Pacific Standard Time, on January 18, 2013. It is 2.4 billion miles from Earth.
Click here to view the official webpage showing where New Horizons is in space.
(AU stands for Astronomical Units, in case you're wondering.)
NEW HORIZONS Blog Entries Archive:
September 26, 2005
December 19, 2005
January 7, 2006
January 17, 2006
January 19, 2006
April 12, 2006
June 15, 2006
February 27, 2007
October 22, 2007
June 8, 2008
October 23, 2008
March 18, 2011
January 20, 2012
July 13, 2012
January 19, 2013
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