New Horizons Pluto Spacecraft Sends Photos As Excitement Builds for Flyby

Dwarf planet Pluto, shown here in the latest high-res image from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, will get its close-up in less than a week.

By Nadia Drake, National Geographic
PUBLISHED July 07, 2015

Pluto will get its closeup in less than a week, despite a heart-stopping glitch that briefly silenced the New Horizons spacecraft over the holiday weekend. Now, the craft is back in action and entering what NASA calls encounter mode—where gathering data about the frosted world trumps just about everything else.

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