An unmanned U.S. spacecraft flew by Pluto on Tuesday in the climax of a decade-long journey to explore the tiny planet for the first time, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) said. Moving faster than any spacecraft ever built, at a speed of about 50,000 kilometers per hour (31,000 miles per hour), the nuclear-powered New Horizons gathered images of Pluto as it flew by. The images will reveal details of Pluto never seen before in the history of space travel. "The New Horizons spacecraft passes its closest approach mark at Pluto after a 3 billion-mile (5 billion-kilometer) journey," a NASA commentator told spectators at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Center outside Washington. The spacecraft was slightly closer to Pluto's surface than initially planned, 12,500 kilometers (7,750 miles) - or about the distance from New York City to Mumbai, India, and it arrived one minute earlier than expected. "Look at what we accomplished," mission operations manager Alice Bowman said. "It is truly amazing that humankind can go out and explore these worlds. And to see Pluto be revealed just before our eyes, it is just fantastic."
