New Horizons snapped an image of an equatorial region near the base of Pluto, capturing a mountain range with peaks as high as 11,000 feet (3,500 metres) above the surface of the icy body. Scientists believe the mountains on Pluto likely formed 100 million years ago, and that the region, which covers about one per cent of Pluto’s surface, may still be geologically active. Pluto has a vast, frozen, craterless plain that also appears to be no more than 100 million years old and is possibly still being shaped by geologic processes. It is north of Pluto’s icy mountains, in the center-left of the heart feature. Interestingly, Pluto isn’t heated by gravitational interactions with a much larger planetary body, so NASA figures some other process must be generating the mountainous landscape. Pluto has an extended atmosphere predominantly made of nitrogen that extends tens of thousands of miles beyond the dwarf planet. Also, as the solar wind interacts with Pluto, it appears that the atmosphere is being “blown back" and forming a long tail of cold, dense ionized gas up to 68,000 miles (109,000 km) long. Spectroscopic data from New Horizons’ Ralph instruments reveal an abundance of methane ice on Pluto, but with “striking differences among regions across the frozen surface of Pluto”. New Horizons snapped an image of Charon, capturing its varied terrain, apparent lack of craters, a canyon estimated to be 4 to 6 miles (7 to 9 km) deep, and a swath of cliffs and troughs stretching about 600 miles (1,000 km, the latter of which suggests widespread fracturing of Charon’s crust due to internal geological processes. New Horizons also observed the smaller members of the Pluto system, which includes four other moons: Nix, Hydra, Styx and Kerberos. New Horizons snapped an image of Hydra, revealing its irregular shape and size and surface (which is probably coasted with water ice). Hydra is estimated to be about 27 by 20 miles (43 by 33 km).
