August 24, 2006 6:59 AM PDT
On Jan. 19, NASA launched the New Horizons spacecraft on a 3-billion-mile journey to reach Pluto and Charon in the summer of 2015. The piano-size craft, designed and built at Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory, will travel at a record 36,000mph after bouncing off Jupiter's gravity field in February 2007. After passing Pluto and Charon, the craft will be directed toward one more object in the Kuiper Belt.
Who knows what the probe may find? It has only been traveling for seven months, and two new moons and a dwarf planet have already appeared on its route.
Photo by Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute (JHUAPL/SwRI)
