NASA Space News 2015: Spacecraft To Start Pluto Mission After 9-Year Voyage

A National Aeronautics and Space Administration spacecraft is set to start its long-awaited mission of taking photographs of Pluto after nine years of traveling into space.

"NASA's first mission to distant Pluto will also be humankind's first close-up view of this cold, unexplored world in our solar system," said Jim Green, director of NASA's Planetary Science Division at the agency's headquarters in Washington. "The New Horizons team worked very hard to prepare for this first phase, and they did it flawlessly."

The piano-sized probe named New Horizons started taking long-range photos on Sunday so scientists can observe the dynamics of Pluto's moons during its close encounter with the mysterious dwarf planet.

Images from the spacecraft will also help scientists map Pluto and its moons more accurately than previous planetary reconnaissance missions.

Considered the world's fastest spacecraft when it was launched in January 2006, New Horizons awoke from its hibernation last month after a more than three-billion-mile voyage. It will soon pass close to Pluto, inside the orbits of its five known moons.

"We've completed the longest journey any spacecraft has flown from Earth to reach its primary target, and we are ready to begin exploring," said Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator from Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

In another development, NASA technologies originally for space exploration are now being used to make life better here on Earth.

Such technologies now have broader applications, including shock-absorbers used during space shuttle launches now being utilized to support buildings during earthquakes.

"The game-changing technologies NASA develops to push the envelope of space exploration also improve our everyday lives," said NASA Chief Technologist David Miller in a press release.

A coliform bacteria simplified by NASA is also now being used to test water quality in rural areas around the world.

Cabin pressure monitors that caution pilots when oxygen level is dropping dangerously in their aircraft also have their origin from NASA.

These technologies, among others, are featured in the 2015 edition of NASA's "Spinoff," published yearly since 1976.