NASA's New Horizons Pluto Spacecraft is Still Exploring, 50 AU From the Sun

Eratosthenes writes:

Messages home, from one on the frontier. Story at Space.com.

New Horizons is about to reach some very rarefied space, but don't expect the NASA probe to rest on its considerable laurels.

On Saturday night (April 17), New Horizons will reach 50 astronomical units (AU) from the sun, a distance achieved by just four other operational probes in the history of spaceflight. (One AU is the average Earth-sun distance - about 93 million miles, or 150 million kilometers.)

The milestone is an occasion to celebrate and appreciate New Horizons' epic mission, which gave humanity its first up-close looks at Pluto in July 2015 and followed that up with a flyby of Arrokoth, an even more distant world, three and a half years later.

And, what is the secret to New Horizons long life?

Read more of this story at SoylentNews.