Pluto, as it turns out, is two-faced. Literally.

New color images from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft reveal that the mysterious dwarf planet has "two very different faces," one of which sports a series of mysterious, evenly spaced dark spots along the equator, according to the space agency. NASA said its scientists "have yet to see anything quite like the dark spots," and their uniform spacing and size has piqued the interest of its New Horizons science team.

The origin of the spots may be a mystery at the moment, but NASA hopes the answer will be revealed as the spacecraft continues its journey towards Pluto.

"It's a real puzzle — we don't know what the spots are, and we can't wait to find out," New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern said in a statement. "Also puzzling is the longstanding and dramatic difference in the colors and appearance of Pluto compared to its darker and grayer moon Charon."

New Horizons team members combined black-and-white images of Pluto captured by the spacecraft's Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager with lower-resolution color data from the Ralph instrument to produce the images you see above. The resulting images show the planet and its largest moon, Charon, in "approximately true color" — like what you'd see if you were actually looking out a window from inside the New Horizons.

The images show about half the planet, meaning features shown at the bottom are actually located near the equatorial line.

At this point, New Horizons is less than 9.5 million miles away from the Pluto system, NASA said, and the spacecraft is "healthy and all its systems are operating normally." During its approach and departure from the dwarf planet, scientists will be on the lookout for clouds.

"If we find clouds, their presence will allow us to track the speeds and directions of Pluto's winds," science team postdoc Kelsi Singer said in a statement.

Meanwhile, this isn't the only recent discovery about Pluto. Images captured by New Horizons back in March revealed that the dwarf planet has broad surface markings, light and dark, including one bright area that may be a polar ice cap.