Second mountain range found in Pluto

The  frozen peaks are estimated to be one-1.5 kms high, about the same height as the US' Appalachian Mountains.

The new range is just west of the region within Pluto's heart called Sputnik Planum (Sputnik Plain). The peaks lie some 110 kms northwest of Norgay Montes (icy Norgay Mountains) discovered first by New Horizons on July 15.


"There is a pronounced difference in texture between the younger, frozen plains to the east and the dark, heavily-cratered terrain to the west," said Jeff Moore, leader of the New Horizons team at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California.

There's a complex interaction going on between the bright and the dark materials that we are still trying to understand, he added in a space agency statement.

This image was acquired by the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on board New Horizons from a distance of 77,000 kms and sent back to Earth on July 20.