NASA's New Horizons makes history as it flies past Pluto

History was made today, as NASA's New Horizons probe reached, and passed it's closest point to Pluto, flying just 12,472km above its surface, the first time any spacecraft has achieved the feat. as it happens. 

The webcast for the historic event, at 5:19 pm (IST) was broadcast live online, and NASA has even released the latest photo taken of Pluto shortly before the flyby. The webcast is still online if you want to listen in on questions and discussions, and you can ask your own questions by tweeting with the hashtag #asknasa.

New Horizons will also send back a high resolution photo of Pluto soon, as well as an abundance of data on the planet. Some of that data has already confirmed for us that Pluto is around 2,370km in diameter so the possibilities of what else we might learn are exciting. 



In the meantime, if you can't wait to get your Pluto fix, you can visit this website for everything you need to know about the New Horizons Mission, or you can download this Eye app from NASA, which runs a computer simulation of the flyby, and even lets you see through the "eye" of the probe.