The Pluto System in the Context of Planetary Exploration

The NASA New Horizons mission will conduct a 6-month long reconnaissance flyby of the Pluto system from January to July 2015. In this presentation, I will set the scientific context for the mission by summarizing the revolution in planetary science brought about by the Kuiper Belt, then summarize the key science objectives of the mission, and the briefly review the payload capabilities aboard New Horizons to carry out these objetives. I will close with an overview of the encoutner timeline.