NASA New Horizons Flies By Pluto After 9 Years, Doodle Celebrates – But Pluto’s Still Not A Planet [PHOTO+VIDEO]

After nine years traveling, NASA's New Horizons space probe has finally reached its goal, to allow humans to study the Earth's favorite dwarf planet up close - now that it has officially arrived, everyone in the world can get a glimpse of the space body that formerly deemed the ninth planet in our Solar System.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration launched the NASA New Horizons probe on January 19, 2006, almost ten years ago, as a part of the New Frontiers program, created to research our nearby planets, and Pluto isn't its only focus, as New Horizons is also set to research objects in the Kuiper Belt.

According to The Verge, the first NASA New Horizons flyby Pluto photo was released at 7:49 a.m. ET on the agency's Instagram page, which got the exclusive of the widely expected photo of what the most distant (dwarf) planet in our solar system looks like - and the photo was actually taken on July 13 at 4pm, 476,000 miles away from the celestial body.

 SNEAK PEEK of gorgeous Pluto! The dwarf planet has sent a love note back to Earth via our New Horizons spacecraft, which has traveled more than 9 years and 3+ billion miles. This is the last and most detailed image of Pluto sent to Earth before the moment of closest approach - 7:49 a.m. EDT today. This same image will be released and discussed at 8 a.m. EDT today. Watch our briefing live on NASA Television at: https://www.nasa.gov/nasatv The high res pic will be posted on the web at: https://www.nasa.gov. This stunning image of the dwarf planet was captured from New Horizons at about 4 p.m. EDT on July 13, about 16 hours before the moment of closest approach. The spacecraft was 476,000 miles (766,000 kilometers) from the surface. Image Credit: NASA #nasa #pluto #plutoflyby #newhorizons #solarsystem #nasabeyond #science

Una foto publicada por NASA (@nasa) el 14 de Jul de 2015 a la(s) 4:00 PDT

BBC reports that this is just the first image from Pluto as NASA New Horizons reaches the dwarf planet, but the first set of images won't be released until Wednesday probably after midnight GMT, once the photos are safely on its onboard memory - this is when the probe will call home to Earth once again.

According to Time Magazine, as the world celebrates that NASA New Horizons reaches Pluto, so does the biggest search engine on Earth, with a lovely Google Doodle created by Kevin Laughlin that shows the probe spinning around the dwarf planet.

The Guardian reports that the first NASA New Horizons scan of Pluto already shows more information about the dwarf planet, most interestingly the fact that it's actually larger than scientists had thought: in fact, New Horizons measured Pluto as 2,370 km across, around two-thirds of the size of our Moon - unfortunately, still qualifying it as a dwarf planet, much to the dismay of Pluto fans.

There also may be even more ice underneath its surface than it had been previously thought.

In the coming days, Food World Worlds will continue to report on NASA's New Horizons - in the meantime, the space agency has announced they'll be posting updates in social media through the hashtag #PlutoFlyBy.