(CNN)Three billion miles away from Earth, in an unchartered slice of our solar system, a small space probe is shaking off its deep sleep and getting ready to become the first spacecraft to visit Pluto and its moons. It's the "beginning of the mission's primary objective: the exploration of Pluto and its many moons in 2015," said Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator from Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado, in a NASA news release. NASA's New Horizons spacecraft was launched on January 19, 2006. It's down to the final 162 million miles of its journey and will arrive July 14, 2015. New Horizons has had 18 hibernation periods totaling 1,873 days to save wear and tear on its components. This was its last nap.
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New Horizons awakens from its final hibernation
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The NASA space probe will visit Pluto and its moons in July 2015
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Talk about a long journey -- New Horizons has traveled nine years and 3 billion miles
The mission managers will spend several weeks checking out the spacecraft and testing computer commands to guide @placeholder through the rest of its flight.