New Horizon's is the spacecraft that's currently on its way to Pluto. The spacecraft will never land on Pluto, it's just going to fly by and take photographs of both Pluto and its moons. New Horizon's has recently become a "world record" holder; it is now closer to Pluto than any spacecraft has ever been! Voyager 1 used to hold this record. In 1986 it was 982 million miles from Pluto. This may seem like a large distance, but in astronomical terms, this is actually very close!
New Horizon's launched in January of 2006, and has been traveling at a whooping 34,000mph towards the edge of our solar system. The path of new Horizons and it's current position are shown in green above. The predicted path is shown in red. It's closest approach to Pluto (~8,000 miles away) will occur in July 2015. At this time, New Horizons will be close enough to Pluto to resolve objects the size of a football field! New Horizons will give us our first ever close up view of Pluto and its moons!
Image Credit: NASA/JPL/New Horizons Team
Image Credit: NASA/JPL/New Horizons Team
