NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft finally reached the pinnacle of its more than nine years of journey as it made the long-awaited flyby of Pluto on Tuesday. The success of the mission was confirmed 13 hours after the actual flyby.

The New Horizons mission researchers were ecstatic over the success of the mission and celebrated at the mission operations center in Maryland Tuesday morning. After making the closest approach to Pluto, the spacecraft called back home to give scientists details of the flyby.

John Grunsfeld, NASA's science mission chief, said the mission has made history and it’s been an unprecedented journey. NASA revealed that the spacecraft flew within 7,700 miles of Pluto at 31,000 mph. The mission researchers had instructed the spacecraft to go past the dwarf planet and extract details of its far side.

Scientists celebrated the success of the mission by releasing the best picture yet of Pluto taken during the flyby.

The spacecraft will beam back better images of the dwarf planet beginning Wednesday, said principal scientist Alan Stern. New Horizons is so distant that it takes 4 ½ hours for signals to travel back to earth.

“We have a healthy spacecraft. We've recorded data of the Pluto system and we're outbound from Pluto”, announced mission operations director Alice Bowman.

The White House and Congress congratulated NASA for the success of the mission, which made the US only nation in the world to have explored every planet in our solar system.