Space Probe to Visit Pluto and Beyond

Of all the planets in our solar system, distant Pluto remains the only one that has yet to be visited and studied by a man-made spacecraft. Hopefully, that will change in July 2015, when NASA's New Horizons probe is scheduled to make a fly-by of Pluto and its moon Charon.

The launch, scheduled for this afternoon, was scrubbed due to high winds, but has been rescheduled for 1:16 PM EST tomorrow. Once launched, the probe will leave Earth at 36,000 MPH -- the fastest a spacecraft has ever traveled -- and will reach Jupiter next year to get a "slingshot" boost that will propel it toward the edge of the solar system within eight more years.

At 3 billion miles away, Pluto is so small and so distant that virtually nothing is known about it. Not even the Hubble space telescope can produce a quality rendering of its surface (though Hubble did discover two additional moons in May 2005). "What we know about Pluto today could fit on the back of a postage stamp," said Colleen Hartman, a deputy associate administrator at NASA. "The textbooks will be rewritten after this mission is completed." One question that the $700 million New Horizons project might help settle is whether Pluto should rightfully be considered a planet at all, or something else, as some astronomers suggest.

After flying by Pluto-Charon, New Horizons will explore the Kuiper Belt, a zone of icy, rocky debris that could provide a glimpse of conditions in the primordial solar system, before the planets were formed.

UPDATE: After several weather-related delays, New Horizons launched successfully this afternoon (1/19) from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Source: AP (Excite)