Like the wagon trains that traveled the expanse of unknown territory just a couple hundred years ago,
New Horizons will venture into the great expanse of the solar system to unknown frontiers.
Let's watch this next video that will give us some insight into this first-of-its-kind NASA mission.
Intro Music.
What is the surface of Pluto like? How cold does it get on that planet farthest from the sun? What objects are in the Kuiper Belt?
Is Pluto's moon, Charon, like the planet, or is it different, and why?
NASA's New Horizons spacecraft is preparing to answer these and many other questions.
After a January 11th launch aboard a powerful Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida,
New Horizons will receive a gravity boost from Jupiter in 2007 to sling it on to Pluto by 2015.
Down to the edge of our solar system where no spacecraft has journeyed before, New Horizons will venture to a new frontier of discovery.
Equipped with a payload of seven specially designed instruments, the spacecraft will conduct fly-by studies of Pluto and its moon
and then speed off to the Kuiper Belt. Exploring the Kuiper Belt is like going back in time to find the ancient beginnings of planetary formation.
This first-of-its-kind mission to Pluto, three billion miles from Earth, will take approximately nine-and-a-half years and
is expected to give scientists unprecedented views of a virtually unknown territory.