NASA releases first close up picture of Pluto

An unmanned NASA spacecraft whizzed by Pluto yesterday, making its closest approach in the climax of a decade-long journey to explore the dwarf planet for the first time, the USA space agency said.

The moment of closest approach for the New Horizons spacecraft came at 5:49 a.m. MT Tuesday.

New Horizons has been carrying science instruments on its 3-billion-mile, nine-and-a-half year journey to Pluto, and an ounce of the astronomer’s ashes have also been along for the ride.

Above is a picture of Pluto taken by the New Horizons spacecraft on Monday at a distance of 476,000 miles from Pluto.

While the observations are underway, New Horizons was in radio blackout, so confirmation that it completed its mission will not come until around 9 p.m. on Tuesday.

Scroll through the tweets for insights from the New Horizons scientists on a dark pole on Pluto’s largest moon, Charon, impact features and speculation of snow on Pluto.

Chad Melton, a senior geology major from Knoxville, is at the New Horizons operations center-based in the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Columbia, Maryland.

The measurements sent back home by New Horizon cleared that the dwarf planet is about 50 miles bigger than previous estimates in the low range.

Pluto’s newly estimated size actually means that its density is slightly lower than previously thought.

Pluto is the only planet (OK, now former planet) in our solar system discovered by an American. “This is true exploration, New Horizons is flying into the unknown, then we will get a 16-month data waterfall”. Pluto has proven to be bigger and redder than anyone imagined, he said, and the data may put the faraway world back in the primary planet lineup. In the meantime, NASA has been teasing the flyby on Twitter. The New Horizons team hopes to go after a smaller Kuiper Belt object following the Pluto flyby, provided a mission extension is approved.