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Today, the New Horizons spacecraft beamed back the first clear images of Pluto's surface – marking the start of a mission into the unknown, icy Kuiper Belt at the edge of our solar system. Pluto's got a blank face. It seems that the dwarf planet's nitrogen-rich ice evaporates faster than  realized. NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has returned the first new photographs of Pluto and the largest of its five moons, Charon. Until now, we've only been able to see the dwarf planet as a pinpoint of light - and guess what it might look like up close. The images were taken from 126 million miles away with New Horizons' telescopic camera. The pictures have already been magnified FOUR times, but still look rather blurry. However, the spacecraft is getting closer and closer to the Pluto system and will be getting some stunning close-ups in a flyby on July 14 this year. By that time, New Horizons will return the most vivid images of Pluto we've ever seen. ...

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft nears Pluto Story highlights ·          Earth's first probe to Pluto is beginning its long approach with the icy world ·          New Horizons will let us see the tiny planet for the first time; it will arrive at Pluto in July (CNN) NASA's New Horizons spacecraft is closing in on Pluto and its five moons. Soon we will see what no one has ever seen before: Crisp, clear pictures of the tiny, icy world. "The pictures are what we're all waiting for," Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator, told CNN. Up until now, the best images of Pluto have been a few pixels shot by the Hubble Space Telescope. The images, released in 2010, took four years and 20 computers operating continuously and simultaneously to produce, according to Marc Buie of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. They show what NASA called an "icy and dark molasses-...