# New Horizons’ Pluto heart

> NASA said the Pluto photo brought 300,000 new Instagram followers.

- Owner: NASA
- Kind: Moment
- Sector: Education
- Seed date: 2015-07-14
- Milestone date: 2015-07-14
- Date basis: Documented milestone; not a measured attention peak.
- Spread Score: 10 (Niche, provisional), v1.2
- Mechanics: Platform jump, Press loop

## Summary

NASA planned a one-hour Instagram preview for people outside its usual audience; a NASA.gov delay extended it to about four hours. The heart-shaped terrain invited reinterpretation: Dean Cole illustrated NASA’s “love letter” metaphor that day.

## Timeline

- 2015-07-13 — NASA / New Horizons (Open web) — New Horizons captured the LORRI frame; NASA combined it with Ralph color information from July 13.
- 2015-07-14 — NASA (Instagram) — NASA debuted the portrait on Instagram around 7 a.m. Eastern, roughly an hour before NASA.gov.
- 2015-07-14 — Milestone: Twitter users (X) — Users shared Pluto memes and jokes as they awaited more flyby images.

The full timeline, metrics and sources are on the case page, or via the Pro API (https://howitspread.com/developers).

Canonical URL: https://howitspread.com/cases/new-horizons-pluto-heart

Cite as: How It Spread (2026). “New Horizons’ Pluto heart.” Case HIS-01048. Spread Score v1.2: 10/100. Updated 2026-10-17. https://howitspread.com/id/HIS-01048