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After traveling nearly 5 billion kilometers through space for more than nine years, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft captured one of the most detailed views ever taken of Pluto’s surface. On July 14, 2015, New Horizons became the first spacecraft to fly past Pluto, revealing a world far more geologically complex than scientists had expected. The image shows part of Pluto’s rugged landscape, where towering mountains of water ice rise beside vast plains of frozen nitrogen. Some of Pluto’s mountains reach approximately 3,500 meters in height, comparable to major mountain ranges on Earth. Unlike Earth, where mountains are primarily made of rock, Pluto’s mountains are built largely from water ice. At temperatures near −230°C, water ice becomes extremely hard and can behave like rock. The smoother regions nearby belong to Sputnik Planitia, a vast basin covered in nitrogen-rich ice. Scientists have identified patterns suggesting that this frozen material slowly moves and circulates through convection. New Horizons also revealed surprisingly young terrain with relatively few impact craters, suggesting that parts of Pluto’s surface have been reshaped by geological processes. The spacecraft discovered evidence of glaciers, atmospheric haze, and possible past cryovolcanic activity, in which icy materials rather than molten rock may erupt onto the surface. Pluto receives only a tiny fraction of the sunlight Earth receives, yet its surface shows evidence of complex interactions between ice, atmosphere, and geology. Because New Horizons was traveling too quickly to enter orbit, its closest encounter lasted only a short time. The spacecraft collected observations as it passed approximately 12,500 kilometers above Pluto’s surface. The mission transformed Pluto from a distant point of light into a world with mountains, plains, glaciers, and an unexpectedly active geological history. Source: NASA; Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory; Southwest Research Institute; New Horizons Mission.