A spectacular sampling of imagery from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft reveals mountains and water ice bedrock on Pluto, an active crust on its largest moon Charon and the first resolved views of the icy world’s tiny mini-moons.
A snapshot of Pluto shows fresh deposits of water ice bedrock and 11,000-foot mountains, revealing evidence Pluto’s surface is one of the youngest in the solar system. Photo credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRINew Horizons found few craters on the surface of Pluto’s Texas-sized moon Charon, evidence of recent geologic activity. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRITuesday’s New Horizons flyby revealed Pluto’s tiny moon Hydra. The first resolved image of the object shows it to be 28 miles long and 19 miles in diameter, and better images are to come. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI
Queen guitarist and contributing New Horizons scientist Brian May wrote a song celebrating the spacecraft’s New Year’s flyby with Ultima Thule, a supposed block of ice and rock in the Kuiper Belt beyond the orbit of Pluto.
The first hints of dramatic cliffs, chasms and craters are showing up in new imagery of Pluto and its Texas-sized moon Charon as NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft prepares to bolt by the icy worlds Tuesday.
A day before NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft closes in on a frozen outpost nicknamed Ultima Thule 4.1 billion miles from Earth, basic facts about the city-sized object continued to elude scientists Sunday as the ground team braced for a deluge of data and imagery that should unmask the unexplored world at the frontier of the solar system.