NASA's New Horizons Pluto Probe Ready for Launch

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http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/060115_newhorizons_prelaunch.html

NASA’s first spacecraft aimed at the edge of our solar system is ready for its more than nine-year trek to the planet Pluto and beyond, mission managers said Sunday.

The spacecraft, dubbed New Horizons, is set to launch spaceward atop a Lockheed Martin-built Atlas 5 rocket on Jan. 17, beginning a spaceflight that will stretch more than nine years to reach a planet 3.06 billion miles (4.92 billion kilometers) from Earth.

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New Horizons is set to launch Tuesday from Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station during a nearly two-hour window that opens at 1:24 p.m. EST (1823 GMT). The McLean, Virginia-based firm International Launch Services is overseeing the space shot. The New Horizons spacecraft and its booster are set to roll out to the launch pad on Monday.

“It’s the fastest spacecraft ever launched,” Colleen Hartman, NASA’s deputy associate administrator for science mission directorate, said of New Horizons during the briefing. “It will get to the Moon in nine hours…it will get to Jupiter in one year and nine months.”