How NASA's New Horizons Mission to Pluto Works (Infographic)

Diagrams show New Horizons encounter with Pluto

New Horizons becomes the first probe to explore Pluto in mid-2015. (Image credit: By Karl Tate, Infographics Artist)

Launched in 2006, the New Horizons probe is the first spacecraft to fly past Pluto. Once thought to be a planet as massive as Earth, Pluto is now known to be an icy body only two-thirds the diameter of Earth’s moon. New Horizons did not stop at Pluto, but is traveling deeper into the Kuiper Belt, with the possibility of encountering more Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs) in the future.

New Horizons got a speed boost from Jupiter’s gravity in 2007. Without it, the probe would not have reached Pluto until the year 2036.

New Horizons’ onboard scientific instruments include cameras, spectrometers, a dust particle detector and radio wave experiments.

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Karl's association with Space.com goes back to 2000, when he was hired to produce interactive Flash graphics. From 2010 to 2016, Karl worked as an infographics specialist across all editorial properties of Purch (formerly known as TechMediaNetwork). Before joining Space.com, Karl spent 11 years at the New York headquarters of The Associated Press, creating news graphics for use around the world in newspapers and on the web. He has a degree in graphic design from Louisiana State University and now works as a freelance graphic designer in New York City.