From Pluto with love: Towering ice mountains on a heart-shaped plain

From Pluto with love: Towering ice mountains on a heart-shaped plain

[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION / NASA, Johns Hopkins Univ. / APL, Southwest Research Inst. A 50 mile (80 kilometer) trip across Pluto would cover the distance indicated by the scale bar/ The close-up of the icy world’s rugged equatorial terrain was captured when the New Horizons spacecraft was about 47,800 miles (77,000 kilometers) […]

Excitement builds as Pluto flyby nears, a decade after launch

Excitement builds as Pluto flyby nears, a decade after launch

[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION] There’s a near-perfect heart shape on Pluto’s rusty red surface which scientists are seeing for the first time as a piano-sized NASA spacecraft, New Horizons, hurtles toward the distant body on its way toward a historic flyby on July 14. … Pluto [was] once considered the farthest planet in […]