From The Archives: Fastest Into The Unkown - The New Horizons Mission To Pluto

Senior editor Craig Covault interviewed Alan Stern, overall lead manager and principal investigator for the Pluto-bound New Horizons spacecraft, for a cover story, in the issue dated January 9, 2006.

Those in the photograph were wearing protective "bunny suits" in the Kennedy Space Center Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility. 

Stern, from the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, had, for years, championed the need for a mission to Pluto and Kuiper Belt objects 

A planned January 17 liftoff would be the first mission into unknown planetary territory since the launch of Voyager 2.

See the cover and read the full issue dated January 9, 2006. 

Read the feature on page 46 in our Space Technology section. 

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