Review for New Horizon Mission to the Pluto and Kuiper Belt

After nine years interplanetary flight, the fastest spacecraft and the first Pluto probe in the world, New Horizon spacecraft, arrived nearby to the Pluto on Jan. 15, 2015. Its distance to the Earth is about 4.7 billion kilometers. New Horizon will probe the Pluto and its satellites, and the other objects in the Kuiper belt. The Kuiper belt is firstly discovered in 1992. It is a new world in the solar system. Since the discovery of numerous Kuiper objects, the Pluto has been downgraded to a dwarf planet in 2006. However, it has become the shepherd object of thousands of frozen celestial bodies in the Kuiper belt. This paper reviewed the science goals and payloads aboard the spacecraft. We summarized the overall design of the New Horizon mission. The key technologies include long-term non-activation and steep, acceleration by the gravity of the Jupiter, the application of space nuclear energy. Since the cold and dark environments, the celestial bodies in the Kuiper belt remain its original state since the solar system was formed. The exploration of the Pluto system and the Kuiper belts will help to reveal the key stage of the formation of planets. It is possible for the New Horizon mission to discover the new planets in the solar system. Its achievements will improve our knowledge of whole image of the solar system.