Amateur astronomers make a mini "Pluto" and have a close contact with it in Liaocheng University, east China's Shandong Province, July 16, 2015. The students aimed to encourage themselves to exploration.

NASA's New Horizons performed the first-ever flyby of Pluto on Tuesday, about 12,472 kilometers (7,750 miles) above the surface, making the closest approach to the dwarf planet at 7:49 a.m. EDT (1149 GMT). New Horizons has already beamed back the best-ever images of Pluto and its big moon Charon on the far fringes of the solar system.