WASHINGTON: New images taken by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft offer the clearest, closest view yet of Pluto’s stunning surface.
The photos were taken as the spacecraft made its closest approach to the dwarf planet in July, and were stored on New Horizons’ digital recorders before being transmitted to the space agency here on Earth. NASA released the photos on Friday, and is preparing to receive another set of high-res images from the spacecraft in the next several days.
“These new images give us a breathtaking, super-high resolution window into Pluto’s geology,” Alan Stern, principal investigator for the New Horizons mission, said in a statement. “Nothing of this quality was available for Venus or Mars until decades after their first flybys; yet at Pluto we’re there already — down among the craters, mountains and ice fields — less than five months after flyby! The science we can do with these images is simply unbelievable.”
The images show Pluto’s cratered, mountainous and glacial terrains. They were captured by the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager aboard New Horizons from a distance of around 10,000 miles.
