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NASA released new visualizations of the dwarf planet Pluto and its biggest moon Charon to commemorate the very first close-up exploration of distant worlds, which took place six years ago when the New Horizons the probe carried out its historical overflight.
The new videos take viewers on simulated flights over the two distant limbs of the solar system, revealing unprecedented detail. Although Pluto and Charon are more than 3 billion miles (4.8 billion kilometers) from Earth, the new video shows features as small as 230 feet (70 meters) on their surface.
“These new high-resolution flyover videos are incredible,” said New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo. in a report. “They not only have scientific value, but they are also engaging, which is why we want to share them with the public.”
Related: Destination Pluto: NASA’s New Horizons mission in pictures
The videos show the nitrogen-laden ice cap in the Sputnik Planitia impact basin, part of The famous “heart” of Pluto. This characteristic covers a large part of the southern hemisphere of the dwarf planet.
When creating the videos, New Horizons science team member and filmmaker Paul Schenk of the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston used some of the sharpest imagery and topographic data that New Horizons acquired during her historical overview of July 14, 2015NASA said in the statement.
The black-and-white images were taken by the probe’s Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) as the spacecraft passed through the dwarf planet at over 30,000 mph (48,000 km / h).
The flight over Pluto begins near the center of the Sputnik Planitia ice cap, revealing the small pits covering its surface. Viewers are then taken to the rugged southeast edge of the basin, which is carved out of ice 3.5 kilometers deep.
Schenk also added color data from New Horizons’ Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC) to bring out the reddish hues of the Pluto highlands.
Charon’s flyby shows the low-lying icy volcanic plains in the moon’s Vulcan Planitia, then heads to the fractured plains to the north about 300 miles (500 km). Clearly visible are several mountains that rise approximately 1.5-2.5 miles (3-4 km) above the volcanic plains. Images from this narrow band show surface details as small as about 450 feet (140 m) in diameter, NASA officials said.
New Horizons flew over an even more distant world, the little one Kuiper Arrakoth Belt Item, on New Year’s Day 2019. And the probe is not over yet; he continues his journey through the outer edges of the solar system on an extended mission, which may include a third flyby if the team can find a suitable target. The spacecraft is currently located some 4.6 billion miles (7.4 billion km) from Earth.
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