Where is New Horizons now?
- Distance from the Sun
- 65.4 au 9.8 billion km, on 22 August 2026
- Distance from Earth
- 64.6 au 9.7 billion km, on 22 August 2026
- Radio signal, one way
- 9.0 hours at the speed of light
Where it is
On 22 August 2026 New Horizons was about 65.4 astronomical units from the Sun and 64.6 au from Earth, with its radio signal nine hours away each way. Pluto averages about 39 au from the Sun, so the spacecraft is now well beyond it and travelling through the Kuiper Belt.
Close to the plane the planets orbit in
Unlike the Voyagers, which climbed steeply out of the plane of the solar system, New Horizons is still within about two degrees of it. That is why its distance from Earth swings by the full two astronomical units over a year, the whole width of Earth's orbit, where Voyager 1's swings by only about 1.6.
What it has done
New Horizons flew past Pluto on 14 July 2015, the first spacecraft to see it as a world rather than a smudge, and went on to reach the Kuiper Belt object Arrokoth on New Year's Day 2019: the most distant object ever explored at close range.
Open the model on New Horizons