Speaker, S. Alan Stern, Southwest Research Institute
Abstract: New Horizons is NASA’s mission to explore Pluto, its system of satellites, and the Kuiper Belt. The $1B New Frontiers mission launched in 2006 and, following a 2007 Jupiter Gravity Assist flyby made the first spacecraft reconnaissance of the Pluto system in 2015 and the first exploration of a Kuiper Belt Object in 2019. The mission continues to explore the Kuiper Belt and also the Sun’s outer heliosphere, and has made a number of wholly unique, groundbreaking astrophysical observations. n this talk I will describe the mission, its major scientific results, and its plans and prospects going forward.