Stunning close-up images of Nasa's historic mission to Pluto show a previously unknown area of frozen cliffs that appear in the shape of a heart on the planet.
Mountains on Pluto! This movie zooms into the base of the heart-shaped feature on Pluto to highlight a new image captured by our New Horizons spacecraft. The new image, seen in black and white against a previously released color image of Pluto, shows a mountain range with peaks jutting as high as high as 11,000 feet (3,500 meters) above the surface of the icy body. Image credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI nasa #pluto #plutoflyby #newhorizons#solarsystem #nasabeyond #science
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Nasa's New Horizons spacecraft transmitted images from its long-awaited flyby this week.
The icy 'heart' has been named Tombaugh Regio after Clyde Tombaugh, the late astronomer who discovered Pluto 85 years ago.
Some of Tombaugh's ashes are on board New Horizons, which travelled 3 billion miles over 9 years to reach Pluto.
What you need to know about Nasa's Pluto mission:
- Nasa's New Horizons spacecraft took nine years to reach Pluto for its historic flyby
- It travelled 3 billion miles
- The planet's 'heart' are icy mountains reaching up to 11,000 feet - as high as the Rockies
- The mountainous region appears to be less than 100 million years old - Pluto itself is 4.5 billion years old
- The planet is relatively free of craters - suggesting it has an internal heat source
- It's bigger than thought - around 1,470 miles across
- It took 4.5 hours for signals from New Horizons to travel at the speed of light back to Earth and back again
Images: Rex Features/Nasa