After nine years traveling in deep space, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft is just days away from its first encounter with the dwarf planet, Pluto.

New Horizons was launched in 2006 to journey into the solar system and explore Pluto. It will be the first spacecraft to ever reach the icy planet.

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After liftoff, however, astronomers reclassified Pluto as a dwarf planet. Pluto is now the second largest object found in the Kuiper Belt, which is made up of millions of icy bodies and asteroids in bizarre orbits.

To date, the robotic probe has traveled about three billion miles. While New Horizons is zipping through space, it's been mostly on hibernation mode.

On December 6, 2014, mission controllers woke up the spacecraft from its deep slumber and are now preparing for this much anticipated encounter with Pluto and its moons. Scientists believe there could be more than five moons orbiting the dwarf planet.

As early as January 15, New Horizons will start its observations and during mid-May, images transmitted from the probe are anticipated to be more detailed than the ones taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. Its closest approach of Pluto will occur on July 14.

Scientists believe the Kuiper Belt is one of the last unexplored regions in the solar system similar to the even more distant Oort Cloud. The belt is said to spawn asteroids and comets.

Right now, New Horizons is so far away from Earth that it takes four and a half hours for radio waves to travel at 186,000 miles per second between the craft and mission control on Earth.

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