New Horizons is an interplanetary space probe launched as a part of NASA's New Frontiers program. Engineered by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) and the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), with a team led by Alan Stern, the spacecraft was launched in 2006 with the primary mission to perform a flyby study of the Pluto system in 2015, and a secondary mission to fly by and study one or more other Kuiper belt objects (KBOs) in the decade to follow, which became a mission to 486958 Arrokoth. It is the fifth space probe to achieve the escape velocity needed to leave the Solar System.
New Horizons before launch
Early concept art of the New Horizons spacecraft. The mission, led by the Applied Physics Laboratory and Alan Stern, eventually became the first mission to Pluto.
An artist's impression of New Horizons' close encounter with the Plutonian system
View of Mission Operations at the Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland (July 14, 2015)
Interplanetary spaceflight
Interplanetary spaceflight or interplanetary travel is the crewed or uncrewed travel between stars and planets, usually within a single planetary system. In practice, spaceflights of this type are confined to travel between the planets of the Solar System. Uncrewed space probes have flown to all the observed planets in the Solar System as well as to dwarf planets Pluto and Ceres, and several asteroids. Orbiters and landers return more information than fly-by missions. Crewed flights have landed on the Moon and have been planned, from time to time, for Mars, Venus and Mercury. While many scientists appreciate the knowledge value that uncrewed flights provide, the value of crewed missions is more controversial. Science fiction writers propose a number of benefits, including the mining of asteroids, access to solar power, and room for colonization in the event of an Earth catastrophe.
The plains of Pluto, as seen by New Horizons after its nearly 10-year voyage
Space colony on the O'Neill cylinder
Apollo command module flying at a high angle of attack to aerobrake by skimming the atmosphere (artistic rendition)
NASA illustration of a solar-sail propelled spacecraft