New Horizons: Across The Expanse

January 2006: At 35,000 miles per hour, New Horizons was the fastest spacecraft ever launched. In February 2007, New Horizons uses Jupiter’s gravity for a boost toward the outer solar system, and offers new views of the planet and its moons. Crossing the solar system, New Horizons covers about 750,000 miles a day. In August 2014, New Horizons crosses the orbit of Neptune, exactly 25 years after Voyager 2’s flight past the ice giant.     July 2015: In a historic flyby, New Horizons provides the first close-up look at Pluto and its family of moons. Then, in January of 2019, New Horizons speeds by the Kuiper Belt object Arrokoth, recording the farthest flyby in space exploration history. New Horizons observes distant Kuiper Belt objects, and measures the charged particle environment of the distant reaches of the Sun’s influence. In April of this year (2021), New Horizons became just the fifth spacecraft to reach 50 astronomical units (AU); that’s 50 times farther from the Sun than our home plane