The New Horizons mission launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida and headed towards Pluto. New Horizons is scheduled to encounter Pluto nearly a decade later in July 2015. New Horizons received a gravity assist from Jupiter around February 2007, passed by Saturn June 2008, flew by Uranus in March 2011, and is scheduled to fly by Neptune around August 2014. Once New Horizons reaches Pluto, it will take communications 4.5 hours to reach the Earth’s Deep Space Network (DSN) antennas. New Horizons will be the first mission to explorer the new class of planets since Voyager did about 30 years ago. With the New Horizons flyby of Pluto, the U.S. will have performed reconnaissance on every planet in the solar system.
› New Horizons: NASA’s Pluto-Kuiper Belt Mission› SCaN History of the 2000’s