The latest photo from the New Horizons spacecraft shows the icy mountains of Pluto’s surface, in 10 times greater detail than anything seen before. The image, released by NASA on Wednesday, includes a portion of an area scientists have named the Tombaugh Regio, after Clyde William Tombaugh, the American astronomer who discovered Pluto in 1930.
Scientists were surprised by a lack of craters, suggesting the mountains (likely composed largely of water ice, not rock) in the shot were formed no more than 100 million years ago — otherwise they’d show evidence of more impacts.
Read the rest of this post on the original site »
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
Will you support Vox’s explanatory journalism?
Most news outlets make their money through advertising or subscriptions. But when it comes to what we’re trying to do at Vox, there are a couple of big issues with relying on ads and subscriptions to keep the lights on:
First, advertising dollars go up and down with the economy. We often only know a few months out what our advertising revenue will be, which makes it hard to plan ahead.
Second, we’re not in the subscriptions business. Vox is here to help everyone understand the complex issues shaping the world — not just the people who can afford to pay for a subscription. We believe that’s an important part of building a more equal society. And we can’t do that if we have a paywall.
So even though advertising is still our biggest source of revenue, we also seek grants and reader support. (And no matter how our work is funded, we have strict guidelines on editorial independence.)
If you also believe that everyone deserves access to trusted high-quality information, will you make a gift to Vox today? Any amount helps.
Yes, I'll give $5/month
Yes, I'll give $5/month
We accept credit card, Apple Pay, and
Google Pay. You can also contribute via
