LAUREL, Maryland — NASA's New Horizons spacecraft — humanity's first robotic visitor to Pluto — is about to make its close flyby of the dwarf planet on Tuesday, giving people around the world their first clear views of the diminutive cosmic body.

But this will not be like a rocket launch or the moon landing, as far as edge-of-your-seat viewing goes.

So, what should we expect from the flyby itself? Probably not much, at first.

Last signal: Monday, 11:17 p.m. EDT

New Horizons will send its last signal before the flyby on Monday night at about 11:17 p.m. EDT.

Closest pass: Tuesday, 7:49 a.m. EDT

At the time of New Horizons' closest approach to Pluto, set for 7:49 a.m. EDT Tuesday, mission control scientists will actually be out of communications with the spacecraft. New Horizons will need to focus on taking advantage of its close flyby of the planet by collecting as much data as it can in the few minutes that it is within just 7,750 miles from the tiny world.

The probe will be speeding too quickly to enter orbit around the small world, so this will be New Horizons' one shot to get a good look at Pluto.

It is likely that NASA will release one or more new photos of Pluto and its moons taken by New Horizons as it approached the dwarf planet prior to the planned temporary loss of contact, at around 8:00 a.m. EDT.

Status report: Tuesday, 8:53 p.m. EDT

The craft won't get back in touch with the ground after the flyby until a window of time starting at about 8:53 p.m. EDT Tuesday.

NASA will broadcast a live update about the health of the spacecraft starting at 8:30 p.m. EDT, including the moment when mission control is expected to get the first ping from the probe to Earth, alerting scientists and engineers of its health after the close Pluto pass.

Historic images: Wednesday, 3 p.m. EDT

This is when we'll get our first glimpse of Pluto from very close range on Wednesday afternoon when NASA first releases images taken during the flyby.

NASA-TV will air a live press conference revealing those images of the new world for the first time at 3 p.m. EDT on NASA TV.

And those photos should be amazing.

If the spacecraft were to fly over New York City in a similar way, its cameras would be able to pick out features like the ponds in Central Park or the runways of airports, according to New Horizons' principal investigator Alan Stern.

So, even though there will be plenty of news about New Horizons on Tuesday, for most of the day, the story will be about the suspense at the Mission Control center here at a campus of Johns Hopkins University outside of Baltimore.

In fact, scientists are equipped with actual wood peg boards to knock for luck during the day, according to Stern.

"We were about a year into the flight, we were doing something as we were approaching Jupiter and were meeting here, and the mission operations manager said, 'Blah, blah blah, knock on wood,'" New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern said.

"And I looked around the control center and realized there was no wood. So I actually went out and bought this tiny little cutting boards that we could put all around mission control, and I put New Horizons stickers on them so they were branded New Horizons," Stern said.

"The interesting thing is, this is now a decade later, people have them on their desk in mission control. I tell them to knock it."

If the spacecraft flyby is successful, scientists will breathe a collective sigh of relief as New Horizons continues its journey out into the a mass of icy bodies out past Neptune's orbit, an area of the solar system called the Kuiper Belt.

Scientists think that the dark area in the planet's south pole looks somewhat like a whale. Image taken by New Horizons on July 9, 2015. Image: NASA

Mashable will be covering the mission throughout, including any breaking news on MashableNews.

You can also follow along with NASA on Twitter and by using the Pluto flyby hashtag #PlutoFlyby on social media.

NASA will also update a full schedule of broadcast events through NASA TV online.