Encounter Design, Planning, and Navigation—Getting to Pluto

Abstract

New Horizons was the first mission with primary science objectives to explore the Pluto–Charon system and, in an extended mission, to observe a Kuiper Belt object (KBO). This article summarizes the challenges in planning and targeting the New Horizons spacecraft for the Pluto encounter and how the team addressed these challenges, reducing mission risk to ensure a successful encounter that fully met its science objectives. It also presents the navigation accuracies achieved and the lessons learned, which were later applied to planning and conducting the flyby of a newly discovered KBO, Arrokoth, during New Horizons’ first extended mission.