Photos: Delta 4-Heavy launch gallery

Fresh views from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft released Thursday reveal diverse landscapes on Pluto, possible dune fields, mysterious channels, and nitrogen ice flows in greater detail than ever before, but it is just the tip of the iceberg as data from the far-flung probe resumes streaming back to Earth.

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft raced past a frozen remnant of the solar system’s birth early New Year’s Day, phoned home to confirm a successful flyby and readied a treasure trove of pictures and other data for transmission back to eager scientists some 4.1 billion miles away.

Marc Buie, Occultation Team Lead, reveals what we know so far about the shape of Ultima Thule as New Horizons races towards its encounter with the Kuiper Belt object.