NASA Release Amazing Photos Of Mountains And Craters On Pluto's Surface

NASA has released amazing new close-up photos of the dwarf planet taken by the New Horizons spacecraft during a historic flyby in July.

NASA has released amazing new close-up photos of Pluto's surface taken by the New Horizons spacecraft during a historic flyby in July.

The photos are the sharpest views of Pluto and the best images of the dwarf planet humans have seen, NASA said in a statement.

“These close-up images, showing the diversity of terrain on Pluto, demonstrate the power of our robotic planetary explorers to return intriguing data to scientists back here on planet Earth,” former astronaut and associate administrator for NASA’s science mission directorate John Grunsfeld said.

“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."

These latest images form a strip 50 miles on the dwarf planet. You can view the images in greater detail here.

“These new images give us a breathtaking, super-high resolution window into Pluto’s geology ... the science we can do with these images is simply unbelievable," New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern said.

The New Horizons spacecraft launched in 2006 and has traveled 3 billion miles in the past nine years.

In July, it flew past Pluto and was just 7,750 miles (about 12,500 kilometers) from the dwarf planet's surface. The pass was the closest scientists have ever been able to get to Pluto.

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