News about NASA missions is rare now, aside from reports about the orbiting International Space Station, but a historic success by the agency made front-page splashes last week. A craft with an apt name – New Horizons – flew past Pluto at 30,000 miles per hour and transmitted the first close-up photos and scientific observations of that distant site. Images of the world three billion miles away –- yes, you read that right -- show ice mountains, vast smooth plains, partly eroded craters and many mysteries to be studied as more data is relayed.

The information, including analysis of the nitrogen and methane atmosphere, could provide important clues to the origin of the planets and our solar system. It took New Horizons more than nine years to reach Pluto. Humans now have visited all the known worlds – seven other planets (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune) and Earth's moon. Pluto used to be considered a ninth planet, but was reclassified in 2006 by international astronomers as merely a "dwarf" planet.

"For me personally, it doesn't matter whether or not Pluto is classified as a planet," says Alice Bowman, mission operation manager at NASA. "It's a place unexplored that we now have the technology to visit. We have the opportunity to increase mankind's knowledge about this system. . . . How very cool it is to change this small faint point of light into a world of color, surface features, and atmosphere." The space agency suggests a new Pluto postage stamp with one of the dramatic photos. The last stamp, issued in 1991, has of an artist's image of the faraway world and the words: "Pluto Not Yet Explored."

NASA specialist: “I don't believe that even the best space artists in the world . . . could make a painting as beautiful as [New Horizons' photos]. This is nature outdoing us." -- Jeff Moore, project geologist and geophysicist

Journalist writes: "The flyby of Pluto . . . is celebrated as a triumph of human ingenuity, the capstone of a mission that unfolded nearly flawlessly." – Kenneth Change, The New York Times

Puny planet: Pluto is just two-thirds the size of Earth's moon. The spacecraft's new measurements show that Pluto is 1,473 miles in diameter, or about 50 miles bigger than estimated.