Which space probe reached Pluto in 2015?

The space probe that reached Pluto in 2015 was NASA’s New Horizons.

New Horizons launched from Cape Canaveral on January 19, 2006, as part of NASA’s New Frontiers program. It used a gravity assist from Jupiter in 2007 to increase its speed and shorten the journey across the outer Solar System. After traveling for more than nine years, it flew past Pluto on July 14, 2015.

During the encounter, New Horizons passed about 12,500 kilometers above Pluto’s surface and returned the first close-up images and scientific measurements of the dwarf planet and its moons. The spacecraft revealed mountains made of water ice, broad plains of nitrogen ice, and a heart-shaped region later named Tombaugh Regio.

New Horizons did not enter orbit around Pluto; it performed a high-speed flyby and continued into the Kuiper Belt. That distinction helps separate it from orbiting missions such as Cassini at Saturn. In 2019, the probe went on to study Arrokoth, a distant Kuiper Belt object.