New Horizons Stories
NASA’s New Horizons Detects Dusty Hints of Extended Kuiper Belt
New observations from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft hint that the Kuiper Belt – the vast, distant outer zone of our solar system populated by hundreds of thousands of icy, rocky planetary building blocks – might stretch much farther out than…
NASA’s New Horizons to Continue Exploring Outer Solar System
NASA has announced an updated plan to continue New Horizons’ mission of exploration of the outer solar system. Beginning in fiscal year 2025, New Horizons will focus on gathering unique heliophysics data, which can be readily obtained during an extended,…
All Eyes on the Ice Giants
NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft plans to observe Uranus and Neptune from its location far out in the outer solar system this fall, and the mission team is inviting the global amateur astronomy community to come along for the ride –…
New Horizons Team Discusses Discoveries from the Kuiper Belt
New Horizons continues to shed light on the mysterious planets and smaller bodies of the outer solar system.
New Horizons Team Adds AI Smarts to Its Kuiper Belt Object Search
By early 1930, Lowell Observatory junior astronomer Clyde Tombaugh had spent months poring over hundreds of telescopic photo plates in the search for a single moving object – which would turn out to be Pluto, the ninth planet. Nearly a…
New Horizons Team Adds AI Smarts to Its Kuiper Belt Object Search
By early 1930, Lowell Observatory junior astronomer Clyde Tombaugh had spent months poring over hundreds of telescopic photo plates in the search for a single moving object – which would turn out to be Pluto, the ninth planet.
Update: NASA Extends Exploration for 8 Planetary Science Missions
Editor’s Note: On May 26, 2022 NASA’s New Horizons mission’s second extended mission proposal was approved for implementation. In the two-year extended mission, New Horizons will conduct multi-disciplinary observations contributing to important science for NASA’s Planetary Science, Heliophysics and Astrophysics…
Using “Charon-light,” Researchers Image Pluto’s Dark Side in Faint Moonlight
NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft made history by returning the first close-up images of Pluto and its moons. Now, through a series of clever methods, researchers led by Tod Lauer of the National Science Foundation’s National Optical Infrared Astronomy Research Lab…
Pluto Landmarks Named for Aviation Pioneers Sally Ride and Bessie Coleman
More than 60 years after Bessie Coleman broke the bonds of terra firma to become the first African American woman and Native American to earn a pilot’s license, Sally Ride blasted off aboard shuttle Challenger to become the first American woman in…
NASA Moves New Frontiers 5 Call to No Earlier Than 2024
NASA has determined that the next opportunity to propose for the fifth round of New Frontiers missions will occur no later than fall of 2024. Missions in NASA’s New Frontiers Program tackle specific solar system exploration goals identified as top…