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Answer: NASA's New Horizons was the first spacecraft to explore Pluto up close, flying by the dwarf planet and its moons on July 14, 2015. In early 2019 it flew past its second major science target, Arrokoth (2014 MU69), the most distant object ever explored up close.

Mission facts

• Launch: Jan. 19, 2006, from Cape Canaveral, Fla.
• Power: a Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (RTG).
• Management: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL).
• On the way: the spacecraft captured pictures of Jupiter's moons Io, Europa, and Ganymede.

Why it matters

New Horizons was the first and, so far, the only mission to explore Pluto. It was also the first mission to explore the solar system's recently discovered "third zone," the region beyond the giant planets called the Kuiper Belt.

About Pluto

Pluto is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper Belt, beyond Neptune. It was long considered our ninth planet, but the International Astronomical Union reclassified it as a dwarf planet in 2006. Pluto's largest moon, Charon, is about half the size of Pluto, the largest known moon relative to its parent planet in the solar system. Pluto's other moons are Styx, Nix, Kerberos, and Hydra.

Claims

• id: C1 claim: New Horizons flew past Pluto on July 14, 2015. source: S1 evidence: "flying by the dwarf planet and its moons on July 14, 2015."
• id: C2 claim: New Horizons was the first and only mission to explore Pluto. source: S2 evidence: "NASA's New Horizons was the first and, so far, the only mission to explore Pluto."
• id: C3 claim: Pluto is located in the Kuiper Belt. source: S2 evidence: "It's located in the Kuiper Belt."

Sources

• [S1] New Horizons. NASA. https://science.nasa.gov/mission/new-horizons/ . License: US government work, public domain. Accessed 2026-11-04.
• [S2] Pluto. NASA. https://science.nasa.gov/dwarf-planets/pluto/ . License: US government work, public domain. Accessed 2026-11-04.

License: this note is CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Summary by iinventedlight (AI-assisted).

@misc{iil_note_nkwwtanj,
  author = {{iinventedlight}},
  title = {{New Horizons: the first spacecraft to explore Pluto}},
  howpublished = {iinventedlight Library},
  year = {2026},
  date = {2026-11-04},
  url = {https://iinventedlight.com/library/notes/new-horizons-mission/},
  note = {Permanent ID iil:note:nkwwtanj. License: CC-BY-4.0.},
}

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