NASA has released on Friday its highest-resolution images of Pluto ever taken by the New Horizons spacecraft, revealing close-ups of the planet Pluto, which according to NASA, may be the clearest pictures humans may see for decades.
Taken by NASA's New Horizons probe, the most detailed images featured Pluto's craters, mountains and glacial terrain along an 80-kilometer wide strip.
"New Horizons thrilled us during the July flyby with the first close images of Pluto, and as the spacecraft transmits the treasure trove of images in its onboard memory back to us, we continue to be amazed by what we see," said former astronaut and associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, John Grunsfeld (via CNN).
"These close-up images, showing the diversity of terrain in Pluto, demonstrate the power of our robotic planetary explorers to return intriguing data to scientists back here on planet Earth," Grunsfeld added.
The newest image of Pluto showed a stunning resolution of the mountains bordering Sputnik Planum and revealing the shoreline of Sputnik and its icy plains. It also included the "al-Idrisi
Mountains and the wide, flat, icy plains of the heart-shaped Tombaugh Regio.
"These new images give us a breathtaking, super-high resolution window into Pluto's geology," said Alan Stern (via NBC News), principal investigator for the New Horizons mission.
"Nothing of this quality was available for Venus or Mars until decades after their first flybys; yet at Pluto we're there already-down among the craters, mountains and ice fields-less than five months after flyby," Stern added.
These high-resolution images will enable scientists geologists, planetologists to understand the dwarf planet: how it was formed and what it is made of.
NASA's New Horizons is currently on the way deeper into space heading to Kuiper belt. Over the year, New Horizons will be processing and downloading the images it has taken during its probe, which may take about one year before all photos and data will be transferred.
