Incredible close-up colour pictures show Nasa's latest discoveries made by its ambitious New Horizons' mission to Pluto.
Releasing a tranche of new images, mission controllers also gave more information about crucial new data gathered during the spacecraft's historic flight through the Pluto system on July 14.
Pluto is hazier than scientists expected and appears to be covered with flowing ice.
New Horizons discovers flowing ices in Pluto’s heart-shaped feature. In the northern region of Pluto’s Sputnik Planum (Sputnik Plain), swirl-shaped patterns of light and dark suggest that a surface layer of exotic ices has flowed around obstacles and into depressions, much like glaciers on Earth (NASA)
Scientists say layers of haze stretch 100 miles into the atmosphere, much higher than anticipated. All this haze is believed to account for Pluto's reddish color.
As for the incredible ice flows, they appear to be relatively recent: just a few tens of millions of years. Temperatures are minus 229 Celsius, and so water ice would not move anywhere in such extreme cold. But scientists say the nitrogen and other ices believed to be on Pluto would be geologically soft and therefore able to flow like glaciers on Earth.
The frozen peaks are estimated to be around 5,000ft high – about 600ft taller than Ben Nevis.
The atmosphere of Pluto backlit by the sun when the New Horizons spacecraft was about 1.25 million miles (2 million kilometers) away (NASA)
In the northern region of Pluto’s Sputnik Planum (Sputnik Plain), swirl-shaped patterns of light and dark suggest that a surface layer of exotic ices has flowed around obstacles and into depressions, much like glaciers on Earth.
In pictures: Pluto up close
Previous picture updates from the mission revealed a new mountain range on Pluto and the first close up images of two of the dwarf-planet’s smaller moons.
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