NASA Nears End Of Nine-Year Mission To Pluto

A NASA spacecraft is to begin photographing Pluto as it nears the end of its three-billion-mile mission to the icy dwarf planet.

The New Horizons probe began its journey from Cape Canaveral in January 2006 to give us our first glimpse of Pluto's mysterious, unexplored world.

Its trip to the solar system's outer frontier is the longest any spacecraft has made from Earth.

The first pictures will reveal little more than bright dots as the vessel is still more than 100 million miles away.

But they will help scientists gauge the remaining distance and keep the piano-sized robot on course for its expected arrival in July.

Project scientist Hal Weaver, from Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory, said: "It's going to be a sprint for the next seven months, basically, to the finish line.

"We can't wait to turn Pluto into a real world, instead of just a little pixelated blob."

New Horizons awoke from its last hibernation period early last month, and controllers have spent the past few weeks getting it ready for the final and most important leg of its journey.

"We have been working on this project, some people, for over a quarter of their careers," said project manager Glen Fountain, from the Applied Physics Lab. "And now we're about to hit the mother lode."

The spacecraft's long-range reconnaissance imager will take hundreds of pictures of Pluto over the coming months.

The first are expected to be beamed back to Earth on Tuesday.

New Horizons is due to hurtle past Pluto on 14 July at a distance of 7,700 miles and speed of nearly 31,000 mph.

Scientists say they have no idea what the dwarf planet looks like way out in the Kuiper Belt, beyond Neptune's orbit.

Five moons have been found around it, including its biggest Charon, but there could be more awaiting discovery.

Pluto was still officially a planet when the craft left Earth, and the only unexplored one in our solar system.

But seven months later, the International Astronomical Union stripped Pluto of its planethood, classifying it instead as a dwarf planet or plutoid.