new horizons is machinemade
engineered by the johns hopkins university applied physics laboratory lrb apl rrb and the southwest research institute lrb swri rrb  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 lrb kbos rrb in the decade to follow