After a 9-year, 3-billion-mile flight, Pluto got its close-up for exactly one day

NASA's New Horizons probe launched in 2006 and flew past Pluto on July 14, 2015, revealing nitrogen-ice mountains, glaciers, and a heart-shaped plain nicknamed Tombaugh Regio, details no telescope had ever resolved. It remains humanity's only close look at the dwarf planet.

— NASA / Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, New Horizons — Pluto flyby, July 2015