Which spacecraft performed the first flyby of Pluto in 2015?

New Horizons performed the first flyby of Pluto in 2015.

NASA launched New Horizons on 19 January 2006 from Cape Canaveral. After a journey of more than nine years, the spacecraft passed Pluto on 14 July 2015, traveling at roughly 14 kilometers per second relative to the dwarf planet.

The flyby returned the first close photographs and scientific measurements of Pluto and its moons. Images revealed mountains made of water ice, broad nitrogen-ice plains, and a large heart-shaped region later named Tombaugh Regio after Pluto’s discoverer, Clyde Tombaugh.

New Horizons did not enter orbit around Pluto; it sped past on a carefully planned trajectory. The spacecraft later flew past Arrokoth in the Kuiper Belt in 2019, becoming the first mission to explore a second Kuiper Belt object up close.