The only spacecraft to visit Pluto is NASA's New Horizons, which passed close by in July 2015.
The known human population on the Dwarf Planet Pluto is 0. Perhaps because it's about 3.14 Billion miles from the Sun, no one has ever been known to have been there.
NASA's New Horizons spacecraft was the first spacecraft to explore Pluto up close, flying by the dwarf planet and its moons on July 14, 2015. In early 2019, New Horizons flew past its second major science target – Arrokoth (2014 MU69), the most distant object ever explored up close.
So how long does it take to get to Pluto? Roughly 9-12 years. You could probably get there faster, but then you'd get less science done, and it probably wouldn't be worth the rush. Are you super excited about the New Horizons flyby of Pluto?
NASA's New Horizons became the first spacecraft to visit dwarf planet Pluto (opens in new tab) in July 2015. The far-traveling spacecraft also visited a distant Kuiper Belt object Ultima Thule (2014 MU69) – now called Arrokoth (opens in new tab) – in January 2019.
Potential for Life
The surface of Pluto is extremely cold, so it seems unlikely that life could exist there. At such cold temperatures, water, which is vital for life as we know it, is essentially rock-like. Pluto's interior is warmer, however, and some think there could even be an ocean deep inside.
Today, Pluto is a freezing cold world with a surface temperature of about 45 Kelvin, or -380 degrees Fahrenheit. However, the research suggests that early on during its ancient history, Pluto had higher chances of being habitable.
Surface. As a gas giant, Jupiter doesn't have a true surface. The planet is mostly swirling gases and liquids. While a spacecraft would have nowhere to land on Jupiter, it wouldn't be able to fly through unscathed either.
Pluto, the ninth planet in our solar system, was not discovered until 1930 and remains a very difficult world to observe because it's so far away. At an average distance of 2.7 billion miles from the Earth, Pluto is a dim speck of light in even the largest of our telescopes.
Neptune has been directly explored by one space probe, Voyager 2, in 1989. As of December 2022, there are no confirmed future missions to visit the Neptunian system, although a tentative Chinese mission has been planned for launch in 2024.
Australia is about 4,000 km wide, while Pluto is only 2,370 km across.
Voyager 1 could have been aimed on to Pluto, but exploration of Titan and the rings of Saturn was a primary scientific objective. This caused the trajectory to be diverted upward out of the ecliptic plane such that no further planetary encounters were possible for Voyager 1.
Mankind has been studying Jupiter for more than 400 years. But we've only been sending spacecraft there since the 1970s! Nine spacecraft have visited Jupiter since 1973, and they've discovered a lot about the planet.
According to the IAU, Pluto is technically a “dwarf planet,” because it has not “cleared its neighboring region of other objects.” This means that Pluto still has lots of asteroids and other space rocks along its flight path, rather than having absorbed them over time, like the larger planets have done.
Voyager 2 is the only spacecraft to have visited Neptune. No spacecraft has orbited this distant planet to study it at length and up close.
As an ice giant, Uranus doesn't have a true surface. The planet is mostly swirling fluids. While a spacecraft would have nowhere to land on Uranus, it wouldn't be able to fly through its atmosphere unscathed either. The extreme pressures and temperatures would destroy a metal spacecraft.
Yes, several landers from the former Soviet Union have landed on Venus. They were only able to send us information for a short time because the extremely high temperature and pressure on the surface of Venus melted and crushed the landers.
Among the stunning variety of worlds in our solar system, only Earth is known to host life.
Additionally, Titan's rivers, lakes and seas of liquid methane and ethane might serve as a habitable environment on the moon's surface, though any life there would likely be very different from Earth's life.
Venus and Mars are the most like Earth, but in different ways. In terms of size, average density, mass, and surface gravity, Venus is very similar to Earth. But Mars is the planet that is most similar to Earth in other ways.
Despite its smaller size, the planet's land area is also roughly equivalent to the surface area of Earth's continents—meaning that, at least in theory, Mars has the same amount of habitable real estate. Unfortunately, the planet is now wrapped in a thin carbon dioxide atmosphere and cannot support earthly life-forms.
Jupiter is made of mostly hydrogen and helium gas. If you tried to land on Jupiter, it would be a bad idea. You'd face extremely hot temperatures and you'd free-float in mid-Jupiter with no way of escaping.