As per a report by NASA scientists, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has taken images of Pluto that unveil about four mysterious dark spots evenly spaced along Pluto's equator.

The report unveiled that the spots are around 300 miles in diameter and have surface area akin to the size to the state of Mississippi. New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, said that they are quite excited to know about the spots. "It's a real puzzle - we don't know what the spots are, and we can't wait to find out", said Stern.

After seeing the images, the scientists have compared the Pluto's surface with its largest moon, Charon. It took more than nine years for the spacecraft to cover 3 billion miles of space between the Earth and Pluto. But New Horizons spacecraft is almost to reach its final destination.

The scientists said that now, New Horizons is less than 9.5 miles from the Pluto system. On July 14, the spacecraft will make a pass by to the dwarf planet. It will fly by within 7,700 miles of the surface. When the spacecraft will reach at the said distance then it will be able to know of what Pluto is made of and will be able to create temperature maps of its multicolored surface.

The spacecraft will look for auroras in its thin atmosphere. New Horizons spacecraft will also take pictures of Pluto. The recent images taken by the spacecraft's Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager and Ralph instrument are in the combination of black and white.