NASA’s New Horizon’s mission to Pluto was set to launch on January 17, 2006. Passport to Pluto goes behind the scenes to show the development and testing of the spacecraft, and the hard work of the scientists, engineers and support staff who worked for decades to make the mission possible.

New Horizons will be the fastest spacecraft ever launched from Earth, on board America’s most powerful rocket, and will be traveling the farthest distance to begin its primary mission of any NASA spacecraft. If all goes well it will reach Pluto and its giant moon, Charon — some 3 billion miles from Earth — as early as 2015, and then travel on out into the Kuiper Belt, a previously unexplored region of the solar system, populated by “ice dwarf” worlds completely unlike the terrestrial and gas giant planets known through previous missions.