25 January 2015
The mission to Pluto is being billed as the last great encounter in planetary exploration.
It is one of the first opportunities to study a dwarf planet up close.
The pictures are critical to enable the New Horizons probe to position itself for a closer fly-by later this year.
As the probe is still 200 million km away, Pluto will be hardly discernable in the images - just a speck of light against the stars.
But the mission team says this view is needed to help line up the spacecraft correctly for its fly-by on 14 July.
