Categories
GeekWire

Probe sends amazing pics of Pluto and Nix

Image: Pluto surface
The New Horizons probe got a look at these craters during its July 14 Pluto flyby. (Credit: NASA / JHUAPL / SwRI)

The hits just keep on coming from NASA’s New Horizons mission to Pluto: This week’s stunners include views of the surface that look weirder than the terrain in “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” plus a close look at Nix, one of Pluto’s five moons.

During its July 14 flyby, the piano-sized New Horizons spacecraft captured a string of pictures showing the eastern edge of a dark region nicknamed Cthulhu Regio and apotential ice volcano called Wright Mons. You can also see light-colored craters that have been partially filled in with darker material.

“Pluto has greatly exceeded our expectations in diversity of land forms and processes — processes that continue to the present,” New Horizons team member Alan Howard, a planetary scientist from the University of Virginia at Charlottesville, said in Thursday’s update from NASA.

Get the full story on GeekWire.

By Alan Boyle

Mastermind of Cosmic Log, contributor to GeekWire and Universe Today, author of "The Case for Pluto: How a Little Planet Made a Big Difference," past president of the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing.

Leave a Reply

%d bloggers like this: