After three billion miles, fastest ever spacecraft set to make Pluto flypast

The fastest spacecraft ever built is on its final approach for a pioneering rendezvous with Pluto. New Horizons is closing in on the dwarf planet at 34,000mph. At 12.49pm (BST) on Tuesday it will fly-by Pluto at a distance of 7,800 miles, slipping between the icy world and its five known moons. Over the last nine years it has travelled three billion miles.

We know tonnes about all the other planets, we just haven’t a clue with Pluto.

Dr Martin Archer, a space physicist at Queen Mary University of London

Seven months into the probe’s journey, Pluto was downgraded by astronomers from a planet to a dwarf planet. For the mission to be successful the spacecraft now needs to fly through a target circle of just 200 miles. Dr Martin Archer, a space physicist at Queen Mary University of London, said “very little” is known about Pluto. He said: “All we’ve really got is a series of images taken from the Hubble space telescope. So what we want to do is get some really good snaps of the planet, work out what its geological structure is, what it’s made of, what the atmosphere is made of.”

Science Pluto