Grand Exploration: New Horizons Orbiter Space Flight Simulator

New Horizons is a NASA robotic spacecraft mission currently en route to the dwarf planet Pluto. It is expected to be the first spacecraft to fly by and study Pluto and its moons, Charon, Nix, and Hydra. NASA may also approve flybys of one or more other Kuiper belt objects. New Horizons was launched on January 19, 2006, directly into an Earthandsolarescape trajectory. It had an Earthrelative velocity of about km, s (58, 536 kmh; 36, 373 mph) after its last engine shut down. The Centaur second stage reignited at EST UTC), successfully sending the probe out of Earth orbit. New Horizons took only nine hours to reach the Moon s orbit, passing lunar orbit before midnight EST that day. It flew by Jupiter on February 28, 2007, and Saturn s orbit on June 8, 2008. It will arrive at Pluto on July 14, 2015. In addition to the scientific equipment, there are several cultural artifacts traveling with the spacecraft. These include a collection of 434, 738 names stored on a comp br, br,