Newscenter Update: NASA's Hubble Telescope Finds Potential Kuiper Belt Targets for New Horizons Pluto Mission

October 15, 2014 Artists' concept Get larger image formats   Find the entire Hubble News archive, image galleries, and much more at hubblesite.org Stay Connected   NASA's Hubble Telescope Finds Potential Kuiper Belt Targets for New Horizons Pluto Mission The Kuiper Belt is a vast disk of icy debris left over from our Sun's formation 4.6 billion years ago. Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs) are a unique class of solar-system body that has never been visited by interplanetary spacecraft. They contain well-preserved clues to the origin of our solar system. NASA's New Horizons probe will fly by Pluto in mid-2015 and then continue across the Kuiper Belt on its way toward interstellar space. The Hubble Space Telescope was used to do a deep sky survey to identify KBOs that the New Horizons spacecraft could potentially visit on its outbound trajectory. The deep sky survey was successful, and Hubble found targetable KBOs for New Horizons. RELEASE LINKS: See full release More Images Fast Facts This news release and its supporting materials are permanently achived at: http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2014/47/ You are receiving this email because you are subscribed to the Inbox Astronomy mailing list, which sends notices in HTML whenever there is a new Hubble Space Telescope image, product, or news update. If you would like to unsubscribe or change your email preferences, please go to: http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/hubble_on_the_go/inbox_astronomy/