Scenes from Space #20

This image was taken from Cape Canaveral in Florida at the launch of the New Horizons spacecraft last week. New Horizons is a fly-by mission to Pluto, and will take almost 10 years to get there. The craft is one of the fastest spaceships ever launched, and will reach the moon in only nine hours (astronauts typically took 3 days to reach the moon) and will pass Jupiter in early 2007. Even traveling that fast, New Horizons will not reach Pluto until 2015. Pluto is the only remaining planet that has never been visited by a spacecraft or photographed up close. The coolest thing about New Horizions, in my opinion? I did some work on this project. I was actually invited to the launch, but was unable to go.