Scientists called the mission a Grand Tour of the solar system The spacecraft was designed to visit Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune and Pluto However sending a spacecraft to multiple planets proved difficult Voyager 1 visited Saturn in 1979 and Jupiter in 1980 Between 1979 and 1989 the Voyager 2 spacecraft went to Jupiter Saturn Uranus and Neptune But a voyage to Pluto would have to wait In 1989 another group of astronomers began working on a mission to Pluto Building and launching a spacecraft takes hundreds of millions of dollars Every part of the spacecraft must be tested Plus scientists must try to anticipate potential problems Once a spacecraft is in space it can be difficult or even impossible to fix The scientists had to convince a space agency to help pay for their spacecraft They suggested a
C icalens New Horizons team members conducted a practice run of the probe's launch in 2005 mission to Pluto many times in the 1990s But the National Aeronautics and Space Administration NASA had other priorities Finally in 2001 NASA chose a project idea called New Horizons to move to the next phase of development That phase involved figuring out the price design and schedule The New Horizons mission was officially approved in the spring 2003 of
For the next two and a half years scientists working on the New Horizons project were very busy They had to make sure the expensive spacecraft could survive the long journey from Earth to Pluto In addition they had to test the spacecraft's cameras and other instruments Pluto orbits the sun in the cold depths of the solar system so scientists had to make sure the instruments would work in such chilly conditions On January 12 2006 NASA deemed the New Horizons spacecraft ready to fly The probe would travel 3 1 billion miles 4 9 billion km to reach Pluto At approximately 1 000 pounds 454 kg New Horizons was relatively light for a spacecraft But it was launched by a powerful rocket This combination allowed the spacecraft to lift off very quickly In fact New Horizons had the fastest launch in history When the probe zoomed away
A tall curved shell called a fairing surrounded the spacecraft and protected it during launch from Earth on January 19 2006 it was moving more than 36 000 miles per hour 57 900 km h That is more than 10 miles 16 km per
