New Horizons: Up, up, and Away!

The New Horizons Pluto flyby spacecraft is poised to become the fastest vehicle ever to depart Earth, blazing outbound at 10.07 mi. per sec.--zooming past the orbit of the Moon in just 9 hr.--on the first mission to the last known planet.

New Horizons' velocity will be about 10,000 mph. faster than most previous Earth escape flights to the Moon and planets.

Flying at 36,000 mph.--the Earthly equivalent to about Mach 50--New Horizons will reach Jupiter in only 13 months. Relative to the Sun, its Earth escape velocity will be 28.8 mi. per sec.

Launch of this "fantastic voyage" on 2.4 million lb. thrust from the most powerful version of the Lockheed Martin Atlas V is scheduled for 1:24 p.m. EST Jan. 17. There will be daily launch windows to Pluto through Feb. 14 should weather or technical factors scrub the first opportunity.

New Horizons is carrying material commemorating Pluto's discoverer, astronomer Clyde Tombaugh, who was cremated after his death 1997 at age 90. The spacecraft is also carrying a small piece of Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne, the first private manned spacecraft, and the names of more than 430,000 space enthusiasts.

The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., led the hardware design and development of the 1,054-lb. spacecraft. APL's challenge was to build as much capability as it could into the lightest New Horizons package possible (see cover).

Given the spacecraft's need for speed, the solution was to launch it on the biggest booster available to achieve the fastest velocity to reach Pluto 3 billion mi. away as early as July 2015.

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