NASA's New Horizons spacecraft is sending back reams of data after its close Pluto flyby on Tuesday, including new details on what comprises its surface and atmosphere.
Scientists on Friday released a simulated flyover of Pluto's 11,000-foot-tall mountain range called the "Norgay Montes," which are named after Tenzing Norgay, one of the first two humans to reach the summit of Mount Everest. Norgay was Sir Edmund Hillary's Nepalese Sherpa when he made his record-breaking ascent of the mountain in 1953.
This makes these mountains the only land feature on any planet -- or dwarf planet, in this case -- named after someone from Nepal, NASA researchers said at a Friday afternoon press conference in Washington.
Norgay might have felt at home on Pluto's mountains, which NASA scientists think are primarily comprised of water-ice.
The flyover also shows the plains located next to the mountains, which are called the "Sputnik Planum," after the Soviet satellite that launched the superpower space race in 1957.
“We’ve discovered a vast, crater-less plains with some kind of story to tell," said Jeff Moore, a co-investigator on the New Horizons mission.
"There’s obviously mountain-building forces operating on Pluto," Moore said, adding that more data yet to be downloaded from the spacecraft should answer some of the scientists' many questions about the dwarf planet's geology.
The images were acquired by the New Horizons' Long Range Reconnaissance Imager, or LORRI, on July 14, from a distance of 48,000 miles. Features as small as a half-mile across are visible in these images.