New Horizons spacecraft gets ready for its closeup with the former ninth planet from the sun, Pluto.

New Horizons is approaching the planet rapidly at a rate of 5,100 kilometers per hour, and it will fly past Pluto with all of its cameras and instruments geared toward it — as well as its moon Charon — on July 14, according to a Guardian report.

It’s only been a few years since scientists got together and decided that Pluto wasn’t a planet at all, but rather a “dwarf planet,” and therefore the number of planets was reduced to eight in our Solar System, but that doesn’t make Pluto any less a source of fascination for scientists — especially with the discovery that there are mysterious light and dark spots both on Pluto and on Charon.

New Horizons has detected some weird stuff on Pluto. It appears that it has mountains and valleys, as well as frozen methane lakes — or even a liquid water ocean deep below the surface.

The push for a mission to Pluto began in 1988, and in 2006 the Ner Horizons spacecraft blasted off on its nearly 5-billion-kilometer journey. The spacecraft was able to use Jupiter for a gravity boost, shortening the trip by a full three years. At its closest, New Horizons will be just 12,550 kilometers from the surface of Pluto. During its flyby, it will focus entirely on the planet in its encounter. It will be moving so fast that every second is precious.

Scientists won’t be able to watch it live, as the spacecraft cannot transmit data and observe the planet at the same time, so NASA will have to wait to see if the flyby was successful.

For such a small planet — Pluto is two-thirds of the size of our own moon — the dwarf planet actually has five moons, the largest being Charon, which is half the size of Pluto. All of these will be subjects of interest during the flyby as well.