After a nine-year journey, NASA's New Horizons probe passed within 12,500 km of Pluto on 14 July 2015, giving the first close view of the dwarf planet. It revealed a surprisingly active world with mountains of water ice as high as the Rockies, a vast heart-shaped plain of nitrogen ice called Sputnik Planitia, a blue haze of layered atmosphere and signs of recent geological activity. The probe then flew on to the Kuiper belt object Arrokoth on 1 January 2019, the most distant object ever visited.
Before and after
- 7 June 2015Death of Christopher Lee
- 13 June 2015Wedding of Prince Carl Philip, Duke of Värmland, and Sofia Hellqvist
- 16 June 2015Donald Trump 2016 presidential campaign
- 16 June 2015Rise of Trumpism
- 14 July 2015New Horizons flies by Pluto
- 20 July 2015Creation of Android Marshmallow
- 23 July 2015Discovery of Kepler-452b
- 29 July 2015Creation of Windows 10
- 29 July 2015Release of Microsoft Edge
More in Exploration & discovery
- 1 October 1958NASA is founded
- 18 March 1965Alexei Leonov makes the first spacewalk
- 1 July 2004Cassini enters orbit around Saturn and Huygens lands on Titan
- 6 August 2012Curiosity lands in Gale crater
- 25 August 2012Voyager 1 enters interstellar space
- 3 January 2019Chang'e 4 lands on the far side of the Moon
The era
This moment belongs to the Contemporary world (1945 CE to today), the world since 1945. You can also browse everything in the 21st century.