More To Pluto Than Meets The Eye

The latest images from the New Horizons spacecraft reveal more mountains in Pluto’s heart.

19:28 23 July 2015

The New Horizon spacecraft has obtained latest images revealing another range of ice mountains on Pluto found on the lower-left edge the planet’s “heart” and are about 1-1.5km high. The mountais sit between a patch of icy, flat terrain called Sputnik Planum, believed to be about 100 million years old and a dark area dating to billion of years old.

 

Jeff Moore, who leads the geology, geophysics and imaging team on New Horizons, said: "There is a pronounced difference in texture between the younger, frozen plains to the east and the dark, heavily-cratered terrain to the west.

 

"There's a complex interaction going on between the bright and the dark materials that we're still trying to understand."

 

The probe’s high resolution camera, Lorri, reveals the most detailed view yet of Hydra, which is about 55km-long and 40km-wide.

"Additional compositional data has already been taken of Nix, but is not yet downlinked. It will tell us why this region is redder than its surroundings," said mission scientist Carly Howett.

 

"This observation is so tantalizing, I'm finding it hard to be patient for more Nix data to be downlinked."