The find suggests the orb might be geologically active

Jul 16, 2015 07:06 GMT  ·  By

This past Tuesday, July 14, NASA's New Horizons mission to Pluto made space exploration history when the agency's probe, launched nearly a decade ago, finally reached the dwarf planet and flew by it. 

The New Horizons spacecraft came as close as 7,550 miles (12,470 kilometers) to the orb and so got to study landscapes on its surface in exquisite detail.

During its flyby of dwarf planet Pluto, the probe stopped communicating with base and focused solely on studying its target. Now that communication has been restored, data and images are pouring in.

There's a young mountain range on Pluto

Of the images NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has so far beamed back to Earth, one shows a budding mountain range towering over Pluto's surface at a top height of about 11,000 feet (3,500 meters).

The mountain range is located in the dwarf planet's equatorial region. Astronomers estimate it formed about 100 million years ago, which makes it a young geological feature.

“The mountains on Pluto likely formed no more than 100 million years ago - mere youngsters in a 4.56-billion-year-old Solar System,” NASA scientists say. “This is one of the youngest surfaces we’ve ever seen in the solar system,” adds researcher Jeff Moore.

The discovery of this young mountain range on Pluto hints that, although it may not seem like it, this orb at the farther end of our Solar System might be geologically active.

As shown by previous investigations, Pluto's surface holds vast amounts of nitrogen and methane ice. Still, astronomers think the mountain range was not birthed by either of these materials but by water ice, the only one strong enough to be able to create peaks.

New Horizons imaged the mountain range about an hour and a half before its flyby of the orb. The view shows the peaks from a distance of about 47,800 miles (77,000 kilometers).

Pluto's moon Charon also came into focus

Its July 14 flyby of Pluto allowed NASA's spacecraft to closely study and image not just the dwarf planet but also Charon, its largest moon, which too shows signs of being geologically active.

Thus, rows of cliffs and channels stretching across its surface, together with a canyon 4 to 6 miles (7 to 9 kilometers) deep, hint at internal geological processes.

The other members of the Pluto system, i.e. Nix, Hydra, Styx and Kerberos, were observed as well, albeit not quite as detailed as the dwarf planet and Charon.

The New Horizons spacecraft is expected to soon deliver more images of the Pluto system, so keep an eye on this page for updates. For now, check out the gallery below to have a look at the images released by NASA scientists so far.

New Horizons delivers new images of the Pluto system (7 Images)

Pluto as imaged by New Horizons on July 13
Mountain range on dwarf planet PlutoThe location of the mountain range
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