new horizons is a space probe launched by nasa on 19 january 2006, to the dwarf planet pluto and on an escape trajectory from the sun. it is the first man-made spacecraft to go to pluto. its flight took nine years. it arrived at the pluto-charon system on july 14, 2015. it flew near pluto and took photographs and measurements while it passed. at about 1 kilobit per second it took 15 months to transmit them back to earth.