Humanity is on the brink of exploring the planet furthest from the Sun for the very first time.

On 14th July New Horizons – the fastest space craft ever made – will hit Pluto, and begin beaming super high resolution images, along with a whole host of other scientific data, back down to us on Earth.

New Horizons was launched back in 2006 which, coincidentally, is the year Pluto was actually downgraded from a Planet to a Dwarf Planet which crushed its self esteem for some time.

In the near decade since then, the NASA launched space craft has been hooning through space at over 35,000 mph to get to it’s destination. And next month, it’s hoped that it’ll be close enough to Pluto to get some never seen before snaps of the distant ball of ice.

Of course, this is all a little bitter-sweet. The excitement at seeing yet another new corer of the universe is almost tangible, and is growing with every day that it draws closer. However, it’s also a sad reminder that this kind of thing will slowly grind to a halt now that NASA has closed its space program for the foreseeable future.

Even so, we’ll be glued to our screen on the 14th of July, eager to get a peak at Pluto from angles nobody has ever seen before.

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