First close-up image of Pluto's surface released

Let's take a moment to realise how astounding the images of Pluto are.

All the scientists I have spoken to are just gobsmacked.

The pictures were taken from the edge of our Solar System just 36 hours ago and yet we are looking at them as if we have taken them on a smartphone - that's how stunning they are.

New pictures of Pluto's surface show mountains that are at least 11,000 feet (3,352 metres) high, NASA scientists say.

The space agency released a video allowing people to "zoom into Pluto" to discover the terrain.

ITV News Science Correspondent Alok Jha said the discovery was "remarkable".

A close-up image of Pluto's surface has been released following the historic fly past.

NASA has released a new image of Pluto's largest moon Charon.

Scientists said the moon has "youthful terrain" and a dark area in the north nicknamed "Mordor".

The latest picture from Nasa's New Horizon's space probe has shown more details of Pluto and its largest moon Charon.

ITV News Science Correspondent Alok Jha reports:

The pair are shown in exaggerated colors that make it easy to note the differences in surface material and features on each.

Cosmologist Stephen Hawking believes there are more secrets of our solar system that will be revealed following Nasa's historic mission to Pluto.

Speaking on Nasa TV after the New Horizons probe successfully flew past the dwarf planet, Hawking congratulated the team on their "pioneering" mission.

Barack Obama has congratulated Nasa for the successfully mission to Pluto by the unmanned space probe, New Horizons.

The President said via Twitter that the event was "a great day for discovery and American leadership."

There were raucous scenes at Nasa HQ as scientists celebrated the successful flypast of Pluto by the New Horizons spacecraft.

After a nine-year journey, the probe passed within 7,767 miles (12,500km) of the dwarf planet, closer to the surface than any other has ever before.

"The thermal operations are nominal. Nothing has overheated, it's all going good. We have a healthy spacecraft, we've recorded data from the Pluto system, and we're outbound for Pluto," said mission operations manager Alice Bowman to huge cheers at the Mission Operations Centre in Laurel, Maryland.

The first lot of data sent back by the New Horizons space probe shows Pluto is larger than scientists thought, Nasa has revealed.

As the craft made history earlier today by passing closer to the dwarf planet than ever before, experts answered questions from people on Twitter about the mission.

The team revealed that not only is Pluto bigger than expected, it definitely has polar ice caps.

Nasa scientists working on the nine-year, three billion-mile journey to examine Pluto cheered, shouted and waved flags as the New Horizons probe made its closest ever approach to the dwarf planet.

The craft will now carry out detailed analysis of the composition of Pluto, as well as capturing high-definition images, in what scientists hope will shed light on the make-up of the solar system.

Read: New picture from New Horizons reveals heart of Pluto