Pluto's close-up: The latest from the New Horizons mission

In July, after a nine-year, 3 billion-mile journey, the New Horizons spacecraft reached the Pluto-Charon double-planet system and the outer reaches of the solar system — the first NASA mission to reach an unvisited planet since Voyager more than 30 years ago. The mission's instruments were designed to capture and transmit to Earth abundant data about not just Pluto but also the mysterious icy objects of the distant Kuiper Belt, the comet-generating "third zone" of our solar system. As science writers gather for New Horizons in Science, the spacecraft is expected to be completing its Pluto encounter and aiming toward another Kuiper Belt Object while data transmission and analysis from the encounter continues. Principal Investigator Alan Stern will share fresh insights from the historic encounter. Social media hashtag: #Pluto Twitter: @NewHorizons2015.