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NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft took this image of Pluto with its Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on July 13, 2015.

As it has neared the dwarf planet, the probe has been sending back increasingly clearer images of its target, and got as close as possible at around 11.50am GMT Tuesday – that’s 12.50pm United Kingdom time, 4.50am Pacific time or 9.50pm Australian time. The probe...

Bringing the blur of a distant world into sharp focus, NASA unveiled its first intimate images of Pluto on Wednesday, revealing with startling clarity an eerie realm where frozen water rises in mountains up to 11,000 feet high.

Maybe New Horizons will find something so interesting that the powers that be will decide to redefine what makes a “planet” yet again. Just because Pluto is bigger than any other known object in the Kuiper Belt does not mean that it’s the most massive or...

Based on Lorri’s reconnaissance, the spacecraft is proceeding on its nominal trajectory, which will take it closer to the dwarf planet than the orbit of Charon, which will be on the opposite side of Pluto during the flyby.

The speed of New Horizon equals that of light and therefore it takes this long duration for the images to reach Earth since the distance between the Earth and the spacecraft is some 4.7 billion kilometres.

NASA and the John Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory are expecting better close ups as New Horizons closes in on Pluto after a nine year long odyssey through the Solar System.