NASA got up close and personal with Pluto

After a journey of nearly 10 years, the National Aeronautics & Space Administration’s New Horizons spacecraft flew past the dwarf planet Pluto in July and brought us the first detailed images of the solar system’s most distant world, 5 billion km away. During the months since the flyby, the craft has beamed to Earth stunning visions of craggy water-ice mountains and a now-iconic heart-shaped plain, as well as data suggesting volcanic activity. On Dec. 4, NASA released the first of the highest-resolution images captured by New Horizons on its closest approach to Pluto’s surface, displaying glaciers and craters that are less than half a city block in size. Pluto was discovered in 1930, but both Earth- and space-based telescopes hadn’t been able to resolve much of its surface detail. “These new images give us a breathtaking, super-high resolution window into Pluto’s geology,” said the New Horizons mission’s principal investigator, Alan ...