Media Release: Australia captures world first close-ups of Pluto

After nine-and-a-half years and just over five billion kilometres, the much anticipated and incredibly long awaited close-up view of Pluto is only hours away.

CSIRO's Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex (CDSCC) will be the first place on Earth to receive the closest encounter images as it's sent through from NASA's spacecraft New Horizons.

Head of CSIRO’s Astronomy and Space Science, Dr Lewis Ball, said the New Horizons mission was one of the great explorations of our time.

“There is so much we don’t know and not just about Pluto, but also about similar worlds,” Dr Ball said. “CSIRO is capturing space history in the making. We will be rewriting textbooks and science that will be taught in the classrooms of tomorrow.”

Added by Flornes Yuen on 2015-07-14