First Ever Color Photo of Pluto and Charon Released by New Horizons Spacecraft

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft is just three months away from returning the first-ever close up images of Pluto and its system of moons. The new information should shed new insights into this distant, cold planet.

"Scientific literature is filled with papers on the characteristics of Pluto and its moons from ground based and Earth orbiting space observations, but we've never studied Pluto up close and personal," said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator of the NASA Science Mission Directorate, in a news release. "In an unprecedented flyby this July, our knowledge of what the Pluto system is really like will expand exponentially and I have no doubt there will be exciting discoveries."

The fastest spacecraft ever launched, New Horizons has traveled a longer time and farther away-more than nine years and three billion miles-than any space mission in history to reach its primary target. The spacecraft is scheduled to make its flyby of Pluto and its at least five moons on July 14.

The flyby is actually the final stage of a five-decade-long era of reconnaissance that began with Venus and Mars in the early 1960s, and continued through first looks at Mercury, Jupiter and Saturn in the 1970s and Uranus and Neptune in the 1980s.

The spacecraft will reach the third zone of our solar system, which is beyond the inner, rocky planets and outer gas giants. While this has been a science priority for years, it's only now that New Horizons is taking that final step.

"This is pure exploration; we're going to turn points of light into a planet and a system of moons before your eyes!" said Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator. "New Horizons is flying to Pluto-the biggest, brightest and most complex of the dwarf planets in the Kuiper Belt. This 21^st century encounter is going to be an exploration bonanza unparalleled in anticipation since the storied missions of Voyager in the 1980s."

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