It took more than nine years and 3 billion miles to get the photo. But for the people who built New Horizons -- the NASA spacecraft that just flew by Pluto -- the journey was well worth it.
Shortly before NASA released the first high-resolution image from the Pluto flyby to the world on Tuesday, the New Horizons crew got to see it first. They cheered, cried and laughed as the now-iconic image was beamed onto the screen.
The image was captured while New Horizons was flying 476,000 miles from Pluto's surface on July 13 at around 4 p.m. ET, about 16 hours before the spacecraft made its closest approach on Tuesday morning.
The photo, which is about 4 kilometers per pixel, is 1,000 times better than imagery that any Earth-bound telescope could capture. New Horizons will be beaming back even better images over the next 24 hours, so stay tuned.