# @nasa on Instagram

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/CKPpGARJA18
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/11733688-nasa-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/thumbnails/235fc2d52c.jpg
- **Posted:** 2021-01-19T23:07:06.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** NASA (@NASA) — https://gondola.cc/NASA

## Caption

🔵From Florida to Pluto to the Kuiper Belt and beyond!

Exactly 15 years ago today, an uncrewed NASA spacecraft by the name of New Horizons blasted off on a 3 billion-mile journey to Pluto from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station by an ULALaunch Atlas rocket at a speed of about 36,400 mph (16.26 km/s). It was the fastest human-made object EVER launched from Earth.

By launching in 2006, New Horizons was able to take advantage of an assist from Jupiter. The Pluto probe approached a rendezvous with Jupiter and used the giant planet as a gravity-based slingshot. The five-month flyby induced a colossal burst of speed, accelerating the spacecraft by 9000 mph up to 52,000 mph. At that wild speed, you could soar from Los Angeles to New York in less than 4 minutes!

After passing through the Pluto system in 2015, the spacecraft retargeted itself for an encounter with a Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) called Arrokoth, a Native American term meaning “sky” in the Powhatan/Agonquian language. While there, the spacecraft gathered data that researchers believe could contribute to our understanding of the origin of life on Earth.

Credit: 

🔵NASA
🔵NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI
🔵NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/Roman Tkachenko

#NASA #Pluto #PlutoFlyBy #Space #Galaxy #Universe #Exploration

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## Tags

nasa, universe, space, pluto, plutoflyby, exploration, galaxy

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