(Reuters) — NASA’s New Horizons team revealed what it called “hauntingly beautiful” new true-color images of Pluto as the eye might see it on Friday (July 24). It’s been more than a week since the U.S. spacecraft sailed past the tiny planet Pluto in the distant reaches of the solar system, capping a journey of 3 billion miles (4.88 billion km) that began nine and a half years ago.
“It’s turning out to really be a scientific wonderland,” said lead scientist Alan Stern.
He said the latest images have twice the resolution of the planet than the previous global image at 2.2 kilometers (1.4 miles) per pixel.
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But the best, Stern said, is yet to come.
“Starting in September, the spigot opens again. And then for about a year, maybe a little bit more, the sky will be raining presents with data from the Pluto system. It’s going to be quite a ride.”
Already, scientists have learned that Pluto, once considered the ninth and outermost planet of the solar system, is bigger than thought, with a diameter of about 1,473 miles (2,370 km), some 50 miles (80 km) wider than previous predictions.
New Horizons is now heading deeper into the Kuiper Belt, a region of the solar system beyond Neptune that is filled with thousands of Pluto-like ice-and-rock worlds believed to be remnants from the formation of the solar system, some 4.6 billion years ago.
The goal of the $720 million New Horizons mission is to map the surfaces of Pluto and its primary moon Charon, assess what materials they contain and study Pluto’s atmosphere.
Scientists do not know how Pluto formed such big mountains, the tallest of which juts almost 11,000 feet (3,350 meters) off the ground, nearly as high as the Canadian Rockies.
Another puzzle is why Pluto has such a young face. The icy body, which is smaller than Earth’s moon, should be pocked with impact craters, the result of Kuiper Belt rocks and boulders raining down over the eons.
