LONDON: These images are “the best close-ups of Pluto that humans may see for decades,” according to NASA
Many denizens of Earth fell in love with the distant dwarf planet when the first images came back this summer showing Pluto’s ‘heart.’ That affection and intrigue has only deepened as more images and data have streamed back from the New Horizons probe—revealing prominent mountains, melted plains, dunes and ice volcanoes.
The spacecraft has sped past Pluto, but it is still sending messages about the dwarf planet. This new mosaic of images comes from the New Horizons’ flyby on July 14, 2015, and show the diversity of features on Pluto’s surface in the closest detail yet.
“[W]e continue to be amazed by what we see,” says John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, according to a press release. The image sequence carves out a 50-mile-wide strip across the face of the dwarf planet, a world three billion miles away.
