Video: New Horizons animation

Images from NASA’s New Horizons probe show Pluto is a surprisingly active world in the deep freeze of the outer solar system, with jagged 11,000-foot-high mountains of frozen water dusted with a veneer of nitrogen, methane and carbon monoxide ice amid smooth plains and jumbled terrain.

Pluto is in the sights of NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, which started collecting around-the-clock science data Thursday as it speeds toward the first close encounter with the distant world in July.

The first images from the New Horizons spacecraft since late July will come back to Earth on Sept. 5, and scientists are salivating over what the new pictures will reveal about Pluto.