With their New Horizons spacecraft delivering the good news that it had completed its flyby of Pluto, NASA has been fielding an outpouring of congratulations.

Around 9 p.m. ET on Tuesday night, New Horizons sent a transmission back to Earth that it had "accomplished the historic first-ever flyby of Pluto," NASA reported in a press release.

"I know today we've inspired a whole new generation of explorers with this great success, and we look forward to the discoveries yet to come," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said in the release. "This is a historic win for science and for exploration. We've truly, once again raised the bar of human potential."

New Horizons also beamed back the first ever high definition image of Pluto, which spread quickly on the Internet and inspired its fair share of memes.

The flyby also gave Stephen Colbert, the political-satirist-turned-late-night-host, the opportunity to debate Pluto's status as a dwarf planet with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

"Following in the footsteps of planetary exploration missions such as Mariner, Pioneer and Voyager, New Horizons has triumphed at Pluto," New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo., said in the release. "The New Horizons flyby completes the first era of planetary reconnaissance, a half century long endeavor that will forever be a legacy of our time."