New Horizons did a flyby of Pluto.
New Horizons . Engineered by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory ( APL ) and the Southwest Research Institute ( SwRI ) , with a team led by S. 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 . Having completed its flyby of Pluto , New Horizons has maneuvered for a flyby of Kuiper belt object , expected to take place on January 1 , 2019 , when it will be 43.4 AU from the Sun . Pluto . During its brief flyby , New Horizons made detailed measurements and observations of Pluto and its moons .