New Horizons was the first spacecraft to conduct a close examination of Pluto, and it went on to investigate a large object in the Kuiper Belt named Arrokoth. The very capable spacecraft returned hundreds of images and a wealth of scientific information about Pluto, its large moon Charon, and the Kuiper Belt Object Arrokoth. New Horizons was launched on 19 January 2006 and embarked on a 9.5-year journey to Pluto. Along the way, it received a gravitational boost in velocity from the flyby of Jupiter. The spacecraft made a close approach flyby of Pluto on 14 July 2015. It went on to make a close approach flyby of Arrokoth on 1 January 2019. At the time of this writing in 2024, 18.13 years after launch, New Horizons was 8.81 billion km from Earth traveling at 13.69 km/s through the Kuiper Belt.