Video: New Horizons animation

Speeding through the outer solar system after a nine-year trek from Earth, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is awake and preparing for an encounter next summer with Pluto.

Ground observations of the New Horizons spacecraft’s next target last month revealed the distant object, lurking in the outer solar system more than four billion miles from Earth, might have an unconventional elongated shape, or even consist of two icy bodies orbiting one another in an age-old cosmic dance.

Pluto’s salmon-colored surface shines in an incredible view taken Monday as New Horizons barreled toward the icy outpost for Tuesday’s historic close-up flyby.