Pluto (R) and its moon Charon are pictured from about 6 million kilometers in this July 8, 2015 NASA handout photo. (Reuters Photo)
An unmanned NASA spacecraft whizzed by
Pluto on Tuesday, making its closest approach in the climax of a decade-long journey to explore the dwarf planet for the first time, the US space agency said.
"New Horizons passes its closest approachmark at Pluto," a NASA commentator said as spectators waved flags in a crowded room at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Center outside the US capital, Washington.
On Twitter, the American space agency kept its followers on the edge of the seat by giving a blow-by-blow update of the spacecraft's journey on the @NasaNewHorizons handle.
The final confirmation message scored a big hit on social media with by collecting close to 6,000 retweets in just 11 minutes.There were some jitters Monday as the $700 million (roughly Rs. 4,448 crores) spacecraft sped toward Pluto, the last undiscovered frontier in the solar system.
According to principal investigator Alan Stern, there was a one in 10,000 chance that the spacecraft could be lost in a collision with debris around Pluto, long considered the farthest planet from the sun until it was reclassified as a dwarf planet in 2006.