Dwarf planet Pluto. Enhanced colour view of Pluto from the New Horizons space probe. Pluto and its moon Charon lie in the Kuiper Belt, some 40 times further from the Sun than Earth. Pluto has a surface with regions of dark, light and orange land which change with the seasons, indicating a complex geology and climate. It is thought these regions are made up of nitrogen and methane ices, overlying a rocky core. New Horizons was launched in January 2006, and arrived at Pluto in 2015. Data obtained by the spacecraft's Ralph/Multispectral Visual Imaging Camera (MVIC) on 14th July 2015.