--- title: Spacecraft to Pluto Seeks Second Destination description: After a nine-year journey, it's a shame to let a perfectly good, $700 million spacecraft go to waste, so scientists are looking for a second world for it to visit canonical: https://time.com/2921174/pluto-spacecraft-whats-next/ author: Michael Lemonick article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-06-26T13:32:10.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-21T08:37:00.087Z article:section: Science og:title: Fine, You Reached Pluto. So What's Next? og:description: After a nine-year journey, it's a shame to let a perfectly good, $700 million spacecraft go to waste, so scientists are looking for a second world for it to visit og:url: https://time.com/2921174/pluto-spacecraft-whats-next/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta44e2a9dc0f45f49/6986995c36176082b490cce4/pluto.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 5027 og:image:height: 2828 og:image:alt: First stop, Pluto. It's an open ticket after that og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Fine, You Reached Pluto. So What's Next? twitter:description: After a nine-year journey, it's a shame to let a perfectly good, $700 million spacecraft go to waste, so scientists are looking for a second world for it to visit twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta44e2a9dc0f45f49/6986995c36176082b490cce4/pluto.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Fine, You Reached Pluto. So What's Next? > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: September 2026. ## TIME Newsletters: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition TIME publishes seven free email newsletters, written and edited by TIME journalists, reaching more than 1.1 million engaged readers. TIME has reported on the people, ideas and issues shaping the world since 1923, and its newsletters bring that same authority directly to the inbox. 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Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-network-2026q3/newsletters?i=0a7b3057-8716-4671-a73c-393207137811&cr=time-nl-network-2026q3-v1) by [Michael Lemonick](https://time.com/author/michael-d-lemonick/) ## Michael Lemonick Jun 26, 2014 1:32 PM UTC  First stop, Pluto. It's an open ticket after that First stop, Pluto. It's an open ticket after that Antonio M. Rosario; Getty Images by [Michael Lemonick](https://time.com/author/michael-d-lemonick/) ## Michael Lemonick Jun 26, 2014 1:32 PM UTC It will be a very big deal when NASA’s [New Horizons](http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1147201,00.html) spacecraft finally arrives at Pluto next July, after a nine-year, four-billion-mile-plus journey. Sure, the tiny, icy world was demoted from “planet” to “[dwarf planet](http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2011254%5F2014850%5F2014554,00.html)” a few months after launch, but being shuffled ignominiously into a lesser category doesn’t make Pluto any less interesting. Once considered to be a weird little world orbiting alone at the edges of the Solar System, it’s now recognized as just the biggest member ([more or less](http://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2098150,00.html)) of a huge swarm of frozen objects known collectively as the Kuiper Belt. A close look and a barrage of scientific measurements of Pluto and its [moons](http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/07/13/why-pluto-now-has-five-moons-but-its-still-not-a-planet/) could give astronomers all sorts of information about a totally unexplored part of the Sun’s immediate neighborhood. But once you’ve spent $700 million on a space probe, it’s a shame to let it go idle after zipping past its prime target. All along, therefore, New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, has been planning to visit a second Kuiper Belt object (or KBO) after the Pluto encounter. The problem: while planetary scientists are sure there are billions of KBO’s out there, they’ve only identified 1,500 or so over the past 22 years—and none of them is on New Horizons’ projected trajectory. The problem is that KBO’s are so vanishingly faint that even the most powerful telescopes have trouble picking them out. In the last few years, Stern and his team have joined the hunt, hoping to increase the haul. “We started searching using very large ground-based telescopes like the Keck and the Subaru,” says Stern, “but it’s a very tough, state-of-the-art problem.” They’ve actually discovered more than 50 new KBO’s this way, but those too are nowhere along the route the space probe is flying. Statistically speaking, says Stern, “we need about twice that many overall to get one or two in the bag to choose from.” That being the case, Stern and his team have been lobbying for time on the Hubble Space Telescope to try and pinpoint a likely target—and the telescope’s stingy Time Allocation Committee has finally said yes (they’re stingy by necessity, not meanness: the number of requests from astronomers for observing time is vastly more than the Hubble can handle). Stern and his crew will now get 200 orbits of the Hubble, each lasting about 90 minutes, to search for New Horizons’ next stop. There’s a catch, though says Stern. “We get 40 orbits right off the bat, but we have to find at least two new objects in that time or they don’t give us the other 160.” They have to do it soon, too. It’s pretty much impossible that there will be any KBO literally on New Horizons’ flight path, so the probe will have to fire its engines to adjust its trajectory slightly. “We have to fire right after Pluto,” says Stern, “and in order to do it accurately we have to track the new object for months to account for its orbit. We have to find the object by the end of the summer, more or less.” Even with the Hubble, there’s no guarantee of success. “There’s no shortage of KBO’s,” says Stern. “But finding them is really, really difficult.” If they beat the end-of-summer deadline, though, scientists will have a second shot at trying to understand what goes on at the very edge of the Solar System, which will be a very good thing. 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