Pictures reveal more of Pluto

Move over Mars, there’s a new red planet in town. And yes, Nasa is calling it a planet.

Yesterday the New Horizons space probe flew past Pluto at 14km a second, and passed at just 12500km from the surface in the Kuiper Belt.

The first images from that fly by are yet to reach earth but Nasa scientists announced that instead of a dark grey icy planet they have found Pluto seems to be a more oxidised red like Mars.

And, controversially, Nasa administrator Charles Bolden says he still believes Pluto is a planet.

“We’re calling Pluto a planet – technically it’s a dwarf planet. I call it a planet, but I’m not the rule maker. It’s a big day for Nasa.

“The US today has become the first nation to visit every planet in our solar system,” Bolden said.

When the probe did its fly by it also carried the ashes of Clyde Tombaugh, the 24-year-old amateur who discovered the dwarf planet back in 1930.

South African Astronomical Observatory’s head of instrumentation, Amanda Sickafoose Gulbis, said: since Pluto was discovered in 1930, “the best images we had were a few blurry pixels”, and that “New Horizons is giving a face to this dwarf planet and returning groundbreaking scientific information”.

Nasa’s chief scientist on the mission, Alan Stern, placed it in historical context when he said in a statement: “We have completed the initial reconnaissance of the solar system, an endeavour started under President Kennedy more than 50 years ago and continuing today under President Obama.”— Additional reporting from The Telegraph.