The New Horizons mission launched from Earth on 19 January 2006 and will arrive at Pluto in July 2015. It will spend 15 months studying this dwarf planet. Pluto (bottom), some 6 billion kilometres from the Sun, has never before been visited by a spacecraft from Earth. It is a small rocky, icy world with a thin atmosphere and a moon called Charon (top). The spacecraft will use cameras and scientific equipment to gather data, sending it back to Earth with the large (2.1-metre) dish antenna.
      New Horizons went beyond Pluto to study another other object in the Kuiper Belt, the contact binary Arrokoth, previously informally called Ultima Thule.