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PEAK PLUTO: Stunning mountain ridge snapped by New Horizons craft

Plus jellybean moon Nix in fresh pics

Photos Photographs of alien mountain ranges, weird splotches and more are still coming in from the New Horizons space probe as it hurtles beyond the orbit of Pluto: the craft is slowly beaming back oodles of data gathered during its flyby of the dwarf iceworld.

For starters, Pluto's moon Nix features what the space agency is calling “an intriguing region on the jelly bean-shaped satellite” due to its “distinct red tint” with “Hints of a bull’s-eye pattern.” Early speculation suggests the possible concentric pattern could be a crater. The new Nix images reveal the moon is about 26 miles (42 kilometers) long and 22 miles (36 kilometers) wide.

Second moon Hydra's now been measured at around 34 miles (55 kilometers) in length and 25 miles (40 kilometers) wide. New Horizons' Long Range Reconnaissance Imager snapped it from a distance of about 213,000 kilometres and captured images depicting what look like two large craters.

New Horizons has now sent home snaps of three Plutonian moons: Nix, Hydra and Charon. Images of the other two, Styx and Kerberos, have been captured but aren't due to make landfall until October.

Plutonian moons Nix (left) and Hydra (right)

Plutonian moons Nix (left) and Hydra (right). Source: NASA. Embiggen here

New Horizons has also sent home more images of Pluto, with NASA releasing one depicting another substantial mountain range found in the lower-left edge of “The Heart”, aka the Tombaugh Regio. The newly-spotted range is “situated between bright, icy plains and dark, heavily-cratered terrain” and is “estimated to be one-half mile to one mile (1-1.5 kilometers) high”. Again, boffins are befuddled by what the mountains mean. It's thought they're younger than the surrounding dark material, but why or how is a matter for conjecture.

Second mountain range found on Pluto

More Plutonian mountains, but this time they're tiddlers. Source: NASA. Embiggen here.

NASA's scheduled a session at which it will offer its latest Plutonian thinking for Friday, US time. The Vulture West crew will be on duty to bring you the news. ®

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