With the days rapidly dwindling until New Horizons makes humanity’s first reconnaissance of Pluto, a stunning new video was released showing the mission’s planetary predecessors.

Paying homage to over 50 years of planetary exploration, the National Space Society’s video shows the groundbreaking missions which opened up the solar system to all of us back here on Earth.

Through the Pioneer, Mariner, and Voyager missions, the worlds of the solar system were no longer mysterious to scientists and astronomers on Earth. The years of the planet’s first reconnaissance and spacecraft are shown in a fitting tribute to New Horizon’s foundations.

Now, 53 years after our initial visits to other worlds, our exploration of the solar system’s major celestial bodies draws to a close. We’ve spent half a century broadening our cosmic horizons; what new horizons will be found at, and beyond, Pluto?

New images from New Horizons of Pluto and its moons: July 15th, 2015

1. Methane map of Pluto

2. Pluto’s moon Charon

Cathy Olkin is now describing a new image of Charon, the largest of Pluto’s moons, named for the ferryman of Greek mythology who carried the dead across the river Styx.

She says that the team has been describing the dark region near the pole as Mordor, and that the dark area may be a veneer and the brighter regions craters. “Going from the north-east to the south-west is a series of troughs and cliffs,” she says. “It’s amazing ot see this image.”

“The extend about 600 miles across the planet, so this is a huge area and it could be that it’s due to internal processes.”

She says below that region is a region where “it’s relatively smooth,” suggesting “it’s geologically active or resurfacing” in that area.

Near the top – “at about the two o’clock position” she points out a canyon. “That canyon is really quite deep, it’s about four to six miles deep. I find that fascinating.”

“So it’s a small world with deep canyons, troughs, cliffs, small regions that are still quite mysterious to us.”

“There’s so much interesting science in this one small image alone.”

3. Pluto’s moon Hydra

He describes its elongated, “surprisingly large” dimensions and jokes: “Hydra’s not a planet”. It’s primarily composed of water ice, he adds, and some higher resolution images are on their way.

4. Close up of Pluto’s surface:

Another researcher says that the team is named the heart-shaped region on Pluto after the discoverer of the planet, Clyde Tombaugh.“While [the heart] was a good name, we wanted to honor the discoverer,” he says.

They zoom into one part of the yesterday’s photo of Pluto with the first very high resolution image. He says surprisingly that they have not found a single impact crater on this image.

“Probably less than 100 million years old, which is a small fraction” of the age of the solar system, he says. “These mountains we’res seeing are quite spectacular, they might be up to 11,000ft high.”

He says the surface is covered with a lot of nitrogen, ice, methane ice – “you just can’t make mountains out of that stuff, so we’re seeing the bedrock.”

Source: The Guardian