New Horizons Pluto fly-by makes history

First close encounter with the dwarf planet

New Horizons, the fastest spacecraft ever flown, made history yesterday as it shot past Pluto at more than 30,000 mph, taking pictures and collecting scientific data.

During the fly-by, the first close encounter with Pluto ever achieved, the US probe passed within 7,767 miles (12,500km) of the mysterious world.

At the Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, mission control staff and visitors clapped, cheered and waved American flags, chanting “USA, USA” in an outpouring of patriotic emotion.

Space agency Nasa posted a stunning new image of Pluto on Instagram, taken by New Horizons from a distance of 476,000 miles.

It clearly shows the dwarf planet’s surprising Mars-like reddish hue and the enigmatic heart-shaped feature on its surface that has already become Pluto’s calling card on the internet.

Other photos taken from a million miles away revealed evidence of cliffs, craters and chasms larger than the Grand Canyon on Earth.

Speaking at APL, former astronaut John Grunsfeld, associate administrator of Nasa’s Science Mission Directorate, said: “It’s just amazing. This is truly a landmark in human history.

“People often think the success of missions like this is about engineers, the hardware – but the real key is team work and that’s what Nasa excels at.

“We’re celebrating the moment New Horizons had its closest approach to Pluto but we’re not talking to the spacecraft; it’s doing its job.

“Tonight we’re going to get the signal, the ping, (telling us) that it made it through the system and it’s ready to start sending us a treasure trove of data.”

New Horizons has taken more than nine years to reach Pluto, carrying with it the ashes of the astronomer who discovered the remote icy object in 1930.

When the mission was launched in January 2006 the aim was to reach the outermost of the Sun’s family of nine planets. Seven months into the journey international astronomers downgraded Pluto’s status to “dwarf planet”.

But despite its small size – just over two-thirds the diameter of the Earth’s moon – Pluto looks and behaves like a fully fledged planet.

Pluto nearly fills the frame in this image from the Nasa spacecraft. Picture: Getty Images.

Picture: Nasa/Bill Ingalls. Mission control staff and visitors to the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland celebrate the amazing achievement. It has taken New Horizons more than nine years to reach its destination.