New Horizons halfway from Pluto to next flyby target
Tuesday, April 4, 2017 - 12:31
in Astronomy & Space
How time and our spacecraft fly—especially when you're making history at 32,000 miles per hour. Continuing on its path through the outer regions of the solar system, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has now traveled half the distance from Pluto – its storied first target – to 2014 MU69, the Kuiper Belt object (KBO) it will fly past on Jan. 1, 2019. The spacecraft reached that milestone at midnight (UTC) on April 3 – or 8 p.m. ET on April 2 – when it was 486.19 million miles (782.45 million kilometers) beyond Pluto and the same distance from MU69.