New Horizons NASA's Mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt
Quick takes on observations and discoveries from New Horizons' voyage to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt
May 2, 2023
New Horizons found that the surface of Kuiper Belt object Arrokoth is uniformly coated by red-colored methanol ice. Since methanol ice usually is white, the origin of this red color was a mystery.
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June 8, 2022
The large ice volcanoes New Horizons discovered on Pluto are unique in the solar system, geologically young and enigmatic.
May 2, 2022
New Horizons recently obtained the best-ever measurement of the light coming from the distant universe - and the level is double that accounted for by all galaxies.
April 5, 2022
New Horizons found two pairs of Kuiper Belt object binaries - small bodies that orbit each other so closely that these "tight twins" cannot be seen as separate objects from any observatory on Earth or
March 28, 2022
Arrokoth may be a highly porous object with a bulk density similar to that of settled snow.
February 2, 2022
New Horizons is now far enough from the Sun to measure the dim Lyman alpha light from the Milky Way galaxy.
December 2, 2021
Shortly after flying past Pluto on July 14, 2015, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft imaged Pluto's night side to view terrain faintly lit by reflected sunlight from Pluto's large moon, Charon.
July 12, 2021
New Horizons scientists have modeled how nitrogen ice is distributed across Pluto's surface - and how that will change.
May 3, 2021
The albedo of Arrokoth's two lobes provides an important clue to the object's origin, indicating that the parts formed at the same time or evolved together.
April 5, 2021
New Horizons obtained infrared spectra of Sputnik Planita -- the left half of Pluto's "heart" -- providing insight into the processes that have shaped the Texas-sized impact basin.
October 29, 2020
New models show that the range of colors on Pluto's surface can be reproduced by altering the abundance and particle size of a single coloring agent called tholin.
August 24, 2020
June 25, 2020
New Horizons' cameras revealed the Kuiper Belt object Arrokoth's remarkable shape, with unequal-sized lobes joined by a narrow neck.
On New Year's Day 2019, the New Horizons spacecraft flew close by the Kuiper Belt object (KBO) Arrokoth, revealing its color and surface composition.
June 9, 2020
July 11, 2019
February 11, 2019
Analysis of the crater size frequency distributions on Pluto’s moon Charon has produced a surprising result.
December 18, 2018
During its flyby of Pluto in July 2015, cameras on NASA's New Horizons spacecraft captured thousands of images, which have been painstakingly analyzed to create a color coded topographical map.
December 14, 2018
September 11, 2018
February 1, 2018
September 20, 2017