NASA Releases the Most Complete Map of the Dwarf Planet's Icy Landscape

About a year after the historic Pluto Flyby, data from the New Horizon space probe still keeps coming. This time, the images sent by the space probe allowed NASA to create the most intricate global map of the miniature planet to date, and the details of the composite map are mind-blowing.

According to The Daily Mail, the map includes all images of the smallest planet's surface taken by New Horizons between July 7 to 14 of the previous year. The images had pixel resolutions ranging from 18 miles (30km) on the Charon-facing side to 770 feet (235 meters) on the side facing New Horizons when it made its closest approach on July 14^th. The blurry non-encounter side isn't shown in full detail because of the largest distances at which the images were captured.

The new images woven into the map were sent back to Earth on April 25^th, and the team will continue to add pictures as the spacecraft transmits the rest of the stored Pluto encounter data. All images from the encounter is expected to be on Earth by early fall, and NASA said they are also working on improved color maps in the meantime.

The space agency also released a relief view of the area surrounding the left side of Pluto's distinctive heart-shaped feature, informally known as Sputnik Planum, Tech Times reported. It shows the wide expanse of the icy surface with an average of 2 miles (3km) lower than the surrounding terrain. There were also pieces of water ice with sharp and angled corners that appear to float between the deposits of more compact and softer solid nitrogen.

In the later part of April, New Horizons also released photos of bight halo craters on Pluto which left scientists amazed. The bright spot is located in Pluto's Vega Terra region and is supposedly made up of methane ice. The amazing photos were taken from 28,000 miles and 106,700 miles from Pluto. However, why the methane ice craters were present in that region remains to be a mystery.

In the meantime, New Horizons is headed to its next mission: an icy body located in the Kuiper Belt.