The planet-like body visited by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft during its July 2015 flyby was Pluto.
New Horizons launched from Cape Canaveral on 19 January 2006 on a mission to make the first close study of Pluto and its moons. The spacecraft used a gravity assist from Jupiter in 2007 to gain speed and shorten its journey across the outer Solar System.
Its closest approach to Pluto occurred on 14 July 2015, when New Horizons passed about 12,500 kilometres above the surface at roughly 49,600 kilometres per hour. The encounter revealed towering mountains, broad icy plains, glaciers of nitrogen ice, and a complex atmosphere. The spacecraft also examined Pluto’s largest moon, Charon, and its smaller moons.
Pluto is often called a planet-like body because it is a dwarf planet: it orbits the Sun and is massive enough to be rounded by gravity, but it has not cleared its orbital neighbourhood. A common mix-up is Ceres, another dwarf planet, which was visited by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft rather than New Horizons. After Pluto, New Horizons continued into the Kuiper belt and flew past Arrokoth in 2019.