NASA's New Horizons spacecraft is just three months away from providing the first-ever-close-up images and scientific observations of Pluto and its moons.

Considered to be the fastest spacecraft ever launched, New Horizons has travelled more than nine years and three billion miles. On July 14, it will flyby past Pluto and its systems of at least five moons.

"Scientific literature is filled with papers on the characteristics of Pluto and its moons from ground-based and Earth-orbiting space observations, but we've never studied Pluto up close and personal", affirmed John Grunsfeld of the NASA Science Mission Directorate.

John said that the flyby will help them know finally about the Pluto system and what it's in reality. He affirmed that there would be some really exciting discoveries. New Horizons has been in a long hibernation period of 1,873 days in order to preserve its instruments and electronic systems.

On January 15, the probe started exploring Pluto at a distance of 260 million kilometers. For now, the NASA researchers have the images that are just points of light, which are being used to guide the craft to its destination.

But as mentioned above, the craft will soon beam back better images and a lot of valuable information. NASA researchers said that though Pluto and its moon Charon have low brightness, the craft would be able to gather data on the geology of them and come up with a precise topography.

Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute (SWRI) in Colorado said that New Horizons is on the way to Pluto, which is the most complex of dwarf planets in the Kuiper Belt. Once the Pluto mission is over, New Horizons will study other objects in the Kuiper Belt.