Nasa's New Horizons probe reveals most detailed images of Pluto

NASA’s New Horizons space probe has yet again mesmerised us with the most detailed and close-up pictures of Pluto’s surface. It has beamed back the stunning images of Pluto to Earth. “This is the most detailed view of Pluto’s terrain you will see for a very long time,” NASA said. The mosaic extends across the hemisphere that faced the New Horizons spacecraft as it flew past Pluto on July 14, 2015. It carries all of the highest-resolution images clicked by the NASA probe.

The mosaic, which has a resolution of about 80 meters per pixel, not only offers scientists and public an opportunity to examine fine details of various types of terrain on Pluto but also lets them determine the processes that formed and shaped them. “This new image product is just magnetic,” said Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator from Southwest Research Institute in Colorado.

“It makes me want to go back on another mission to Pluto and get high-resolution images like these across the entire surface,” said Stern. The view in the mosaic extends from the “limb” of Pluto almost to the “terminator” or day/night line in the southeast of the encounter hemisphere.

The width of the strip ranges from more than 90 kilometres at its northern end to about 75 kilometres at its southern point, NASA said. NASA has also released a video which moves down the mosaic from top to bottom, offering new views of many of Pluto’s distinct landscapes along the way.

Starting with hummocky, cratered uplands, the view crosses over parallel ridges of “washboard” terrain, chaotic and angular mountain ranges, cellular plains, coarsely “pitted” areas of sublimating nitrogen ice, zones of thin nitrogen ice draped over the topography, and dark mountainous highlands scarred by deep pits.

The images in the mosaic were obtained by New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) about 15,850 kilometres from Pluto, about 23 minutes before the probe’s closest approach.

(With inputs from PTI)