The unmanned spacecraft will have a close shave past Pluto today, thereby allowing scientists a close glimpse of the dwarf planet's surface for the first time.
But there were jitters on Monday as the USD 700 million spacecraft, called New Horizons, sped toward Pluto, the last undiscovered frontier in the solar system.
According to principal investigator Alan Stern, there is a one in 10,000 chance that the spacecraft could be lost in a collision with debris around Pluto, long considered the farthest planet from the sun until it was reclassified as a dwarf planet in 2006.
The closest approach is set for tomorrow at 7:49 am (1149 GMT), when the piano-sized spacecraft shaves by Pluto's surface at a speed of 30,800 miles (49,570 kilometers) per hour.
The first spacecraft to visit an unexplored planet since the NASA Voyager missions of the 1970s will be busy snapping pictures and collecting data, and will phone home later.
New Horizons will send a signal to Earth at 4:20 pm (2020 GMT). It will take nearly five hours to reach scientists.
That means NASA won't announce until about 13 hours after the flyby, at 9:02 pm (0102 GMT Wednesday), whether or not the spacecraft survived the high-speed encounter
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