NASA has released video of Pluto, taken as its 'New Horizons' spacecraft approached the dwarf planet.

The video is made up of more than 100 high resolution images, taken over six months as the spacecraft approached the dwarf planet, flying by in July, 2015.

It starts with a distant spacecraft's view of Pluto and its largest moon, Charon – closing the distance day by day – with a dramatic 'landing” on the shoreline of Pluto's informally named Sputnik Planum.

To create a movie that makes viewers feel as if they're diving into Pluto, mission scientists had to interpolate some of the panchromatic (black and white) frames based on what they know Pluto looks like to make it as smooth and seamless as possible.

Low-resolution color from the Ralph color camera aboard New Horizons was then draped over the frames to give the best available, actual color simulation of what it would look like to descend from high altitude to Pluto's surface.

After a 9.5-year voyage covering more than three billion miles, New Horizons flew through the Pluto system on July 14, 2015, coming within 7,800 miles (12,500 kilometers) of Pluto.

Carrying powerful telescopic cameras that could spot features smaller than a football field, New Horizons sent back hundreds of images of Pluto and its moons that show how dynamic and fascinating their surfaces are.

'Just over a year ago, Pluto was just a dot in the distance,” says New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern.

'This video shows what it would be like to ride aboard an approaching spacecraft and see Pluto grow to become a world, and then to swoop down over its spectacular terrains as if we were approaching some future landing.

'The challenge in creating this movie is to make it feel like you're diving into Pluto,” says Constantine Tsang, a New Horizons scientist at SwRI who worked with Stern to create the movie.

'We had to interpolate some of the frames based on what we know Pluto looks like to make it as smooth and seamless as possible. It's certainly fun to see this and think what it would feel like to approach a landing on Pluto!”