Slashdot Mirror
NASA's New Horizons Returns Images of the Canyons of Pluto's North Pole (examiner.com)
MarkWhittington writes: NASA's New Horizon space probe, which flew by Pluto last July, continues to send data and images that amaze and awe. The space agency released an image of Pluto's North Pole taken by the probe's Ralph/Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC). The image shows, as has previous images of other regions of the so-called dwarf planet, that Pluto is a diverse world with an active geology. The North Pole of Pluto is characterized by long canyons that are covered in yellow methane ice. The canyons show how the dwarf planet had, and perhaps still has active tectonics..
Because of the slowness of the data link and the fact that NH is barreling away from Earth at high speed, the strategy has been to send all the JPGs first, then the Raw images. It is these, trickling back, that we are seeing now, that are giving us these new revelations so long after the flyby,
When all the high-res images have been uploaded, NH can be repurposed for a new flyby in the Oort Cloud.