The long wait is almost over.On Tuesday morning (July 14) — nine and a half years after launching, and a quarter-century after its mission began to take shape — NASA's New Horizons spacecraft will perform history's first flyby of Pluto. Closest approach will occur at 7:49 a.m. EDT (1149 GMT) Tuesday, when New Horizons zooms within just 7,800 miles (12,500 kilometers) of the dwarf planet's frigid surface.
"It's thrilling," New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado,."The spacecraft is performing very well. The data that we're getting to the ground is beautiful," Stern added. "The energy in the room with the science team, the energy in the room with mission control- it's just electric."On Sunday, NASA and New Horizons scientists unveiled the latest photos from New Horizons, including a tantalizing view of what appear to be canyons and craters on Pluto's big moon Charon, and a new view of the dwarf planet itself.
New Horizons is "a capstone mission," New Horizons project manager Glen Fountain, of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab in Laurel, Maryland,"It is the completion of this initial reconnaissance of our solar system."
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