NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft snapped the first high-resolution photographs of Pluto and its moons this week. The images reveal the planetary system in unprecedented detail — highlighting mountain ranges, icy plains, deep canyons, and more. Planetary scientists are now using the images to figure out what they can learn about Pluto’s origins — based on the rock’s surface features.
The best images from the Pluto flyby week


NASA
The best part is there’s more to come. New Horizons has only sent back 1 to 2 percent of the data it has collected. The space probe has many more images of Pluto’s system to show us, and we’ll get those pictures over the next couple of weeks. Until then, check out the best images we got this week, when we celebrated the first ever flyby of dwarf planet Pluto.
Verge Video: The biggest discoveries from Pluto’s flyby
Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.
Most Popular
Most Popular
- Midjourney goes from generating cat images to full-body ultrasound scans
- Apple’s weird anti-nausea dots cured my car sickness
- Tim Cook says RAM expenses are ‘unsustainable’ and Apple is going to raise prices
- This Ghost in the Shell keyboard makes me want to activate the hundred spidery robot fingers inside my regular fingers
- Amazon employees say they’re facing termination for backing data center limits





















