buzzfeed:

Here’s Our First Close-Up Photo Of Pluto’s Surface

NASA’s New Horizons probe launched in 2006 and has traveled 3 billion miles in the past nine years. It’s not stopping at Pluto, but it flew past the dwarf planet at 7.49 a.m. ET Tuesday.

At its closest approach, the spacecraft will have been just 12,500 kilometers (about 7,750 miles) from the surface, traveling at 14 kilometers per second (31,000 miles per hour). This is the first time we’ve come this close to Pluto. [x]