"New Horizons" to Pluto ready for launch

New Horizons is ready for its 10 year cruise to Pluto & beyond...

If all goes as planned, NASA will launch a space probe called New Horizons next week to capture the first up-close imagery of Pluto, its moons and a region of the outer solar system called the Kuiper Belt.

Liftoff of the spacecraft atop a Lockheed Martin Atlas V rocket is set for 1:24 p.m. ET Tuesday from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

New Horizons will have a long road to travel -- some 3 billion miles. NASA's best-case scenario is that the trip to Pluto will take almost 10 years -- a long wait for the scientists and engineers who have designed the mission, but they say the payoff will be worth it.

Full story on cnn.com .

Seanie.

I've been watching nasa TV about this pluto mission, It'll be great, when it eventually gets there.

Roll on 2015, quite a wait, but I'm even more interested about this than cassini! I've never even seen pluto in a scope, never mind close-up. A lot to be seen and done in between, still, it will be worth the wait

Hope everything goes ok with the launch

Keith..

Never mind the launch - the trip after passing Mars will be quite hazardous, as it will have to pass through quite a few sparse asteroid fields. The longer the trip, the greater the chance of a collision... with anything.

Fingers crossed.

New Horizons launch scrubbed again this morning - the control room in Maryland suffered a power cut and can't support the launch. Scheduled now for 24 hrs time.

Brian

I always get a bad feeling when things like this end up sitting on the lauch pad for a long time. :shock:
Lets hope tomorrow works out.