NASA Sets Sights On Pluto, Readies The New Horizon Probe For Launch

No probe has visited Pluto, its moon Charon or anything in the Kuiper Belt, though the Voyager crafts took some pictures, but that's all about to change with the launch of The New Horizons Spacecraft.

The ship, the first in NASA's New Frontiers program, carries seven specific scientific instruments to study surface features, temperature, geology, composition and atmospheric structure, which use a miniscule 28 watts of power combined, making this a hyper-efficient probe.

Now that the payload package has been configured for flight, all that's left if the lofting. Liftoff is scheduled for January 11, 2006, with arrival as early as 2015.

If successful, The New Horizons probe will expand our knowledge of how our Solar System was formed, and give us a better idea of what sort of "neighbors" live in the Kuiper Belt.