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Like the wagon trains that traveled the expanse of unknown territory just a couple hundred years ago,

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New Horizons will venture into the great expanse of the solar system to unknown frontiers.

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Let's watch this next video that will give us some insight into this first-of-its-kind NASA mission.

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Intro Music.

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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?

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Is Pluto's moon, Charon, like the planet, or is it different, and why?

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NASA's New Horizons spacecraft is preparing to answer these and many other questions.

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After a January 11th launch aboard a powerful Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida,

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New Horizons will receive a gravity boost from Jupiter in 2007 to sling it on to Pluto by 2015.

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Down to the edge of our solar system where no spacecraft has journeyed before, New Horizons will venture to a new frontier of discovery.

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Equipped with a payload of seven specially designed instruments, the spacecraft will conduct fly-by studies of Pluto and its moon

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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.

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This first-of-its-kind mission to Pluto, three billion miles from Earth, will take approximately nine-and-a-half years and

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is expected to give scientists unprecedented views of a virtually unknown territory.

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