NASA is giving chance to people to send name suggestions so that they could be used for features on the dwarf planet Pluto.

Although NASA doesn't know what those features are, a flyby of the New Horizons space probe by Pluto planned for July 14 would offer clues as to the surface of Pluto and its satellites.

However, people must follow some rules in order to name heavenly objects and this task is taken by the International Astronomical Union (IAU).

The IAU is the formal authority for naming celestial bodies. The name submissions must follow a set of accepted themes and guidelines set out by the IAU's Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature.

NASA's New Horizons team will sort through the names and submit its recommendations to the IAU. Only then it will be decided whether names would be used or not.

NASA reported that the New Horizons probe has already covered more than 3 billion miles since it launched on January 19, 2006.

Now it's now in the first stage of an historic encounter with Pluto that includes long-distance imaging, as well as dust, energetic particle and solar wind measurements to characterize the space environment near Pluto.

It will pass Pluto at a speed of 31,000 mph take thousands of images and making a wide range of science observations. It will take approximately 4.5 hours for data to reach Earth at a distance of nearly 4 billion miles from Earth at flyby.

The initial deadline for the "Our Pluto" naming campaign has been extended to April 24, Friday. The campaign is in collaboration with NASA, IAU and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence SETI Institute in Mountain View, California.