NASA's New Horizons delivers poignant image as it nears space milestone
New Horizons is going where only Voyagers and Pioneers have gone before.
NASA's New Horizons spacecraft launched on its mission to study Pluto and its moons back in early 2006. This is what it looked like before launch.
Voyagers 1 and 2. Pioneers 10 and 11. Those historic spacecraft are about to welcome a new member to an elite club. NASA's New Horizons spacecraft will reach a distance of 50 astronomical units from the sun on Saturday, April 17. That's 50 times farther from the sun than Earth is.
After New Horizons launched in 2006, it was able to communicate with Earth in mere minutes. Now, at a distance of nearly 5 billion miles (7.5 billion kilometers) away, it takes about 14 hours round trip for confirmation it's received instructions from home.
New Horizons won't get to learn a secret handshake, but NASA did figure out an appropriate way to celebrate the milestone. The space agency had New Horizons snap an image in the direction of Voyager 1, the first spacecraft to leave the solar system. New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern called it "a hauntingly beautiful image."
NASA's New Horizons spacecraft snapped this image in the direction of Voyager 1 (the yellow circle) in late 2020.
New Horizons is still well within our solar system, and it has accomplished a lot already. It famously stopped off at Pluto to capture images and study the dwarf planet. It's now exploring the Kuiper Belt, a region of space filled with icy objects that extends beyond Neptune's orbit.
"Flying a spacecraft across our entire solar system to explore Pluto and the Kuiper Belt had never been done before New Horizons," Stern said. "Most of us on the team have been a part of this mission since it was just an idea, and during that time our kids have grown up, and our parents, and we ourselves, have grown older."
NASA expects New Horizons' battery to power it into the late-2030s. Its travels are far from over.
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