In just a few hours, NASA will be making history as it sends the first-ever detailed images of Pluto.
The New Horizon spacecraft is now about 8,000 miles from its icy surface
This news is generating a huge buzz on social media.
Meteorologist John Ahrens traveled to a local science museum to get a behind the scenes look at how historic the event is.
RESOURCE: nasa.gov/
Ahrens followed a tour from Denver's Unity Presbyterian Church as they learned more about the solar system.
Pluto, which is four billion miles from Earth, is probably the most mysterious object in the solar system.
"It's not an actual planet. It's a dwarf planet," said visitor Mason Koehler.
"Pluto is really the last unexplored body of the solar system," said Schiele Museum and Planetarium Director Jim Craig said. "It's really sort of the last time we're going to be seeing something for the first time."
RESOURCE: schielemuseum.org/
"The biggest issue really is if something runs into it -- a micrometeorite -- at the speed it is traveling, something the size of a grain of sand has the impact of a 22-caliber bullet,” Craig said.
To put it in perspective, it took 9.5 years for New Horizons just to get to Pluto. The data will be coming in slowly, but interested people are in for weeks of beautiful images of the dwarf planet.
Experts say from where it is now near Pluto, it would take about 50,000 years to reach the closest star.
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