New Horizons' best close-up of Pluto's surface – Watch!

New Delhi: NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has delivered yet another stunning most detailed view of Pluto’s terrain.

 

Using images obtained by the New Horizons, scientists constituted a mosaic that includes all of the highest-resolution images taken by the NASA probe.

This mosaic strip extends across the hemisphere that faced the New Horizons spacecraft as it flew past Pluto on July 14, 2015.

With a resolution of about 260 feet (80 meters) per pixel, the mosaic affords New Horizons scientists and the public the best opportunity to examine the fine details of the various types of terrain on Pluto, and determine the processes that formed and shaped them, say NASA.

“This new image product is just magnetic,” said Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator from Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado. “It makes me want to go back on another mission to Pluto and get high-resolution images like these across the entire surface.”

Video credit: NASA.gov Video

The width of the strip ranges from more than 55 miles (90 kilometers) at its northern end to about 45 miles (75 kilometers) at its southern point.

The images in the mosaic were obtained by the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) instrument on board the NASA probe approximately 9,850 miles (15,850 kilometers) from Pluto, about 23 minutes before New Horizons’ closest approach.