Scientists elated as first close-up photos of Pluto reveal icy mountain ranges
Icy mountain ranges can be seen rising from Pluto’s surface, according to the first close-up images released from NASA’s New Horizon’s spacecraft after its historic of flyby of the dwarf planet.
The mountains’ elevation reaches 3,400 meters, the US space agency said, or about as high as the Rocky Mountains.
Scientists were also stunned Wednesday to see a close-up section of Pluto that showed no sign of craters, despite its home in the Kuiper Belt, the region beyond Neptune where cosmic debris is constantly pelting Pluto and its five moons.
NASA said the findings suggest that Pluto is geologically active, and contains parts that are youthful in astronomical terms, perhaps less than 100 million years old, a small fraction of the 4.5 billion year age of the solar system.
Scientists first saw hints of a geologically active phenomenon on Triton, a moon of Neptune that was glimpsed by the Voyager 2 space mission in the 1980s. It also had virtually no impact craters.