StarFest 2016

Last summer, humanity’s first robotic explorer of the worlds beyond Neptune reached its primary target: the Pluto system. During a whirlwind first-reconnaisance flyby at over 50 times the speed of a jet airliner, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft imaged Pluto and its five moons in unprecedented detail. In this talk, I will cover the history of the outer solar system exploration, the New Horizons mission, and examine the latest images and findings from the mission. I will conclude with a preview of where New Horizons could head next in an extended mission ­ deep into the Kuiper Belt, targeting a flyby of a completely new and unexplored world (currently) called 2014 MU69, the most distant world ever targeted for exploration.