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First "close up" picture of Ceres taken in December 2014; probe entered orbit in March 2015; first dwarf planet visited by a spacecraft, largest asteroid visited by a spacecraft. 134340 Pluto: 2376.6 1930 New Horizons: 2015: 12,500: 10.5 Flyby; first trans-Neptunian object visited, most distant object visited by a spacecraft (at the time of the ...
The exploration of Pluto began with the arrival of the New Horizons probe in July 2015, though proposals for such a mission had been studied for many decades. [1] There are no plans as yet for a follow-up mission, though follow-up concepts have been studied.
Montage of planets and some moons that the two Voyager spacecraft have visited and studied. It is the only program that visited all four outer planets. A total of nine spacecraft have been launched on missions that involve visits to the outer planets; all nine missions involve encounters with Jupiter, with four spacecraft also visiting Saturn.
In the following days, the spacecraft transmitted images that revealed for the first time what the surface of Pluto looks like. It has a smooth expanse just above its equator, some 1,000 miles wide, that resembles a bright, icy heart. It has frozen mountain ranges and spectral plains that may have only just formed.
It has been proposed that Pluto may have formed as a result of the agglomeration of numerous comets and Kuiper-belt objects. [ 167 ] [ 168 ] Though Pluto is the largest Kuiper belt object discovered, [ 130 ] Neptune's moon Triton , which is larger than Pluto, is similar to it both geologically and atmospherically, and is thought to be a ...
This is a list of all spacecraft landings on other planets and bodies in the Solar System, including soft landings and both intended and unintended hard impacts.The list includes orbiters that were intentionally crashed, but not orbiters which later crashed in an unplanned manner due to orbital decay.
Pluto likely acquired large moon Charon in a “kiss and capture” collision billions of years ago. It may have created a subsurface ocean on the icy dwarf planet.
This is a list of space probes that have left Earth orbit (or were launched with that intention but failed), organized by their planned destination. It includes planetary probes, solar probes, and probes to asteroids and comets, but excludes lunar missions, which are listed separately at List of lunar probes and List of Apollo missions.