US orbiter flies past Pluto, takes photos

This image released July 15, 2015 by NASA shows Remarkable new details of Pluto’s largest moon Charon are revealed in this image from New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI), taken late on July 13, 2015 from a distance of 289,000 miles (466,000 kilom. It was celebration for Nasa scientists on Tuesday night after a US spacecraft visited Pluto, which is the ninth planet in the earth’s solar system.

The New Horizons probe, the fastest spacecraft ever to leave earth, was launched over nine years ago. It has flown across five billion kilometres at a speed of more than 54,000 kilometres an hour, headed to the far outer space of the earth’s solar system to catch a glimpse of the planet.

The probe took photos of Pluto and the five moons that orbit the planet. Photos beamed back to earth show the dwarf planet as having shades of red and orange. Scientists have interpreted the photos as being craters and valleys on the surface of the planet. Sensors found the planet was larger than previously thought. It was covered in ice and rock.

“Many people put so much work into this. We’ve completed the initial reconnaissance of the solar system, an endeavour started under President Kennedy,” Alan Stern, the scientist in charge of the mission said.

America has now become the first country in the world to send a spacecraft to nine planets.eters.