In 1996, researchers using the Hubble Space Telescope mapped the surface of Pluto and identified twelve major regions.

Pluto has not been visited by a spacecraft, so we do not have any close-up images, and there is much about Pluto that we do not know. A new space mission, named New Horizons, will visit Pluto and Charon in 2015, and then more of the Kuiper Belt.