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New Horizons

New Horizons is an interplanetary space probe launched by NASA in 2006 as part of the New Frontiers program. It became the first spacecraft to perform a flyby study and capture high-resolution photographs of Pluto and its moons. On July 14, 2015, it flew 12,500 km above Pluto's surface. The mission matters because it revolutionized our understanding of the distant outer Solar System. Beyond Pluto, New Horizons continued exploring the Kuiper belt. The spacecraft was engineered by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory and the Southwest Research Institute, led by Alan Stern. As one of the fastest human-made objects ever launched from Earth, New Horizons represents a major achievement in space exploration.

Sources

• en.wikipedia.org: “New Horizons is an interplanetary space probe launched as a part of NASA's New Frontiers program. Launched in 2006, it became the first spacecraft to perform a flyby study and capture high-resolution photographs of Pluto and its moons during its encounter.”
• en.wikipedia.org: “On July 14, 2015, at 11:49 UTC, it flew 12,500 km (7,800 mi) above the surface of Pluto, which at the time was 34 AU from the Sun, making it the first spacecraft to explore the dwarf planet.”
• en.wikipedia.org: “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.”
• en.wikipedia.org: “It was the fastest (average speed with respect to Earth) human-made object ever launched from Earth.”