It looks like Pluto might be getting a second chance at becoming a "planet" once again. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has sent an unmanned spacecraft/probe to conduct research on Pluto 3 billion miles away.

NASA's planned research project: the New Horizons Pluto-Kuiper Belt Mission, which has taken over a decade, is now in its final year. The probe was launched from Jupiter on July 15, and it should reach Pluto within a year from now by mid-July 2015. The New Horizons research team hope to find moons, and the origins of planets.

The New Horizons Mission sent the unmanned spacecraft to Pluto on January 2006. By the middle of last month the mission engineers and scientists had put the probe into a better trajectory laying the path for it to fly by Pluto one year from now, CBS News reported.

In February 2007, the New Horizons spacecraft used Jupiter to slingshot its way by providing a gravitational boost toward Pluto, this cut the trip down by three years. Already, New Horizons have sent back photos showing fascinating locations, one of a volcanic eruption on one of Jupiter's moon, CBS News reported.

NASA officials stated that Pluto is the only planet that has been unexplored within our solar system. The mission's intent is to view Pluto and its moon Charon -- sometimes Pluto and Charon are considered a twin planet -- as well as investigate the cold and almost solitary worlds at the edge of our Solar System. All of this research could help scientists determine and learn more about the origins and evolution of Earth's distant planetary neighbors, CBS News reported.

When did Pluto lose its status as a planet? Back in August 2006, the International Astronomical Union (IAU), the organization responsible for giving official scientific names to celestial objects, had declassed Pluto's status to that of a "dwarf planet." What this meant was that rough worlds that existed within the innermost part of our Solar System and the gas giants of the outermost part of the Solar System will be designated as planets. Pluto is way outside the outermost part of our Solar System.

In 2006, the IAU defined a planet as a "body that orbits the sun without being another object's satellite," and it has to be "large enough to be rounded into a sphere by its own gravity." However, it must not be so big that it sparks nuclear fusion reactions similar to a star, and it has to be "clear of its neighborhood of most other orbiting bodies," The Christian Science Monitor reported.

Pluto failed to meet the new criteria because it did not clear its neighborhood. Pluto's demotion was met by scientists and researchers with relief and gratitude by some, while others refused to accept the classification. The New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, was adamant that Pluto was a planet.

Stern, however, is not against calling Pluto a dwarf planet, but he stated that dwarf planets should at least be included within the categories of "true" planets, as well as rocky worlds such as Earth, and gas giants such as Saturn and Neptune, The Christian Science Monitor reported.

"For most people, going to a brand-new planet, and not back to Mars to rove a different place, but to a whole new place for the first time, and to see it revealed is going to be an experience unlike anything they've ever seen," Stern said. "I think we're going to have a chance to really enthuse people."

Pluto is not alone. Within the Kuiper Belt, the area in which the solitary planet exists, there is a ring of icy bodies that orbits the sun beyond Neptune. And the latest research has somewhat unveiled some mysteries about Pluto such as scientists were not aware that it had any moons until 1978; Pluto's moon, Charon, is 750 miles (1,207 km) across, making it half as wide as Pluto, The Christian Science Monitor reported.

Also, the Hubble Space Telescope revealed that Pluto has four tiny moons; two moons were discovered by astronomers in 2005 naming them Nix and Hydra, and then the moons Kerberos and Styx were discovered in 2011 and 2012 respectively.

The New Horizons project wants to search for additional moons around Pluto. With this presumed discovery it could determine whether or not Pluto has a ring system. The probe is also expected to map the surface and characterize the geology of Pluto and Charon, The Christian Science Monitor reported.

"Many predictions have been made by the science community, including possible rings, geyser eruptions, and even lakes," Adriana Ocampo, program executive for NASA's New Frontiers program, said. "Whatever we find, I believe Pluto and its satellites will surpass all our expectations and surprise us beyond our imagination," Space.com reported.

Pluto orbits the sun once every 248 years, and it lies outside the scope of most visual instruments. NASA's Hubble Space Telescope only shows Pluto's spherical shape and somewhat reddish color. Some researchers suggest that that the changing color patterns over the years hints at some kind of activity occuring there, Space.com reported.