Interplanetary spaceflight in the context of Pluto

Spaceflight (or space flight) is an application of astronautics to fly objects, usually spacecraft, into or through outer space, either with or without humans on board. Most spaceflight is uncrewed and conducted mainly with spacecraft such as satellites in orbit around Earth, but also includes space probes for flights beyond Earth orbit. Such spaceflights operate either by telerobotic or autonomous control. The first spaceflights began in the 1950s with the launches of the Soviet Sputnik satellites and American Explorer and Vanguard missions. Human spaceflight programs include the Soyuz, Shenzhou, the past Apollo Moon landing and the Space Shuttle programs. Other current spaceflight are conducted to the International Space Station and to China's Tiangong Space Station.

Spaceflights include the launches of Earth observation and telecommunications satellites, interplanetary missions, the rendezvouses and dockings with space stations, and crewed spaceflights on scientific or tourist missions.

New Horizons is an interplanetary space probe launched as a part of NASA's New Frontiers program. It was launched in 2006, becoming the first spacecraft to perform a flyby study of the Pluto system in 2015. A secondary mission contained a flyby and study of one or more other Kuiper belt objects (KBOs) in the decade to follow, where it flew past 486958 Arrokoth in 2019. It was the first space probe to ever take high-resolution photographs of Pluto in 2015.

It was engineered by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) and the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), with a team led by Alan Stern. New Horizons is the fifth space probe to achieve the escape velocity needed to leave the Solar System.

Venus is the second planet from the Sun. It is often called Earth's "twin" or "sister" among the planets of the Solar System for its orbit being the closest to Earth's, both being rocky planets, and having the most similar and nearly equal size, mass, and surface gravity. Venus, though, is significantly different, especially as it has no liquid water, and its atmosphere is far thicker and denser than that of any other rocky body in the Solar System. The atmosphere is composed mostly of carbon dioxide and has a thick cloud layer of sulfuric acid that spans the whole planet. At the mean surface level, the atmosphere reaches a temperature of 737 K (464 °C; 867 °F) and a pressure 92 times greater than Earth's at sea level, turning the lowest layer of the atmosphere into a supercritical fluid. From Earth, Venus is visible as a star-like point of light, appearing brighter than any other natural point of light in the sky, and as an inferior planet always relatively close to the Sun, either as the brightest "morning star" or "evening star".

The orbits of Venus and Earth make the two planets approach each other in synodic periods of 1.6 years. In the course of this, Venus comes closer to Earth than any other planet, in contrast to Mercury which stays closer over the course of an orbit to Earth than any other planet, due to its orbit being closer to the Sun. In interplanetary spaceflight from Earth, Venus is frequently used as a waypoint for gravity assists, offering a faster and more economical route. Venus has no moons and a very slow retrograde rotation about its axis, a result of competing forces of solar tidal locking and differential heating of Venus's massive atmosphere. As a result, a Venusian day is 116.75 Earth days long, about half a Venusian solar year, which is 224.7 Earth days long.

The NASA Deep Space Network (DSN) is a worldwide network of spacecraft communication ground segment facilities, located in the United States (California), Spain (Madrid), and Australia (Canberra), that supports NASA's interplanetary spacecraft missions. It also performs radio and radar astronomy observations for the exploration of the Solar System and the universe, and supports selected Earth-orbiting missions. DSN is part of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

The Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) was a component of the U.S. NASA Vision for Space Exploration plan. A competition was held to design a spacecraft that could carry humans to the destinations envisioned by the plan. The winning design was the Orion spacecraft.

Although it was originally conceived during the Space Exploration Initiative during the 90s, official planning for the vehicle began in 2004, with the final Request For Proposal issued on March 1, 2005, to begin a design competition for the vehicle. For the later design and construction phases, see Orion (spacecraft). The Orion CEV became part of NASA's Constellation Program to send human explorers back to the Moon, and then onward to Mars and other destinations in the Solar System. After Constellation was cancelled, it was envisioned for emergency evacuation of the International Space Station, then retained for revived Solar System exploration plans.

Space travel, or space flight (less often, starfaring or star voyaging) is a science fiction theme that has captivated the public and is almost archetypal for science fiction. Space travel, interplanetary or interstellar, is usually performed in space ships, and spacecraft propulsion in various works ranges from the scientifically plausible to the totally fictitious.

While some writers focus on realistic, scientific, and educational aspects of space travel, other writers see this concept as a metaphor for freedom, including "free[ing] mankind from the prison of the solar system". Though the science fiction rocket has been described as a 20th-century icon, according to The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction "The means by which space flight has been achieved in sf – its many and various spaceships – have always been of secondary importance to the mythical impact of the theme". Works related to space travel have popularized such concepts as time dilation, space stations, and space colonization.

The Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) is an expendable medium-lift launch vehicle designed and operated by ISRO. It was developed to allow India to launch its Indian Remote Sensing (IRS) satellites into Sun-synchronous orbits, a service that was, until the advent of the PSLV in 1993, only commercially available from Russia. PSLV can also launch small size satellites into Geostationary Transfer Orbit (GTO).

Some notable payloads launched by PSLV include India's first lunar probe Chandrayaan-1, India's first interplanetary mission, Mars Orbiter Mission (Mangalyaan), India's first space observatory, Astrosat and India's first Solar mission, Aditya-L1.

The Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex (GDSCC), commonly called the Goldstone Observatory, is a satellite ground station located in Fort Irwin in the U.S. state of California. Operated by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), its main purpose is to track and communicate with interplanetary space missions. It is named after Goldstone, California, a nearby gold-mining ghost town.

The station is one of three satellite communication stations in the NASA Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) program’s Deep Space Network (DSN), whose mission is to provide the vital two-way communications link that tracks and controls interplanetary spacecraft and receives the images and scientific information they collect. The others are the Madrid Deep Space Communications Complex in Spain and the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex in Australia. These three stations are located at separations of approximately 120° longitude so that as the Earth rotates a spacecraft will always be in sight of at least one station.

The planet Mars has been explored remotely by spacecraft. Probes sent from Earth, beginning in the late 20th century, have yielded a large increase in knowledge about the Martian system, focused primarily on understanding its geology and habitability potential. Engineering interplanetary journeys is complicated and the exploration of Mars has experienced a high failure rate, especially the early attempts. Roughly sixty percent of all spacecraft destined for Mars failed before completing their missions, with some failing before their observations could begin. Some missions have been met with unexpected success, such as the twin Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, which operated for years beyond their specification.