The New Horizons probe lifted off from Pad 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on the 19th of January 2006. The launch occurred aboard an Atlas V rocket with a Centaur second stage that burned for five minutes and twenty-five seconds before reigniting.
JPL scientist Robert Staehle called Clyde Tombaugh in August 1992 to ask for permission to visit his planet which sparked the series of proposed missions. Stamatios Tom Krimigis formed the team with Alan Stern in December 2000 as one of many entrants in the New Frontiers Program competition.
On the 14th of July 2015 at 11:49 UTC the spacecraft flew above the surface of Pluto which was then 34 AU from the Sun. This event made it the first spacecraft to explore the dwarf planet and telemetry data confirming a successful flyby arrived on Earth on the 15th of July 2015.
The spacecraft made its closest approach to Jupiter on the 28th of February 2007 at 05:43:40 UTC when it was 230,000 kilometers from the planet. The flyby increased New Horizons speed by four kilometers per second accelerating the probe to a velocity relative to the Sun that shortened its voyage to Pluto by three years.
The flyby occurred on the 1st of January 2019 at 00:33 UTC when it was from the Sun to the Kuiper belt object designated 486958 Arrokoth. Hubble Space Telescope had uncovered three potential targets designated PT1 PT2 and PT3 before PT1 was chosen as the target.