New Horizons Mission Fly-by
The first mission to Pluto was launched by NASA on January
19, 2006. It is traveling to fly past Jupiter on 20 February 2006, the
fastest trip to Jupiter by an emissary from Earth. Like the previous
missions to the outer solar system, New
Horizons will also change its course and shorten its journey to
Pluto through a gravity assist from the giant plane, flying past the
dwarf planet in 2015, on its way to explore the Kuiper Belt.
In September 2006, it obtained its first
image of Jupiter from its Long Range Reconnaissance Imager, or LORRI
for short.
