New Horizons' Pluto Flyby: A Journey Across an Icy World

The New Horizons spacecraft flew past Pluto in July 2015 at a speed of about 80,000 kilometers per hour, capturing stunning images. This two-minute time-lapse video, created by enhancing and combining these images, simulates a flyover of Pluto's surface. The video reveals mountains composed of water ice, plains of solid nitrogen, and strange polygonal nitrogen ice formations, possibly originating from Pluto's relatively warm interior. The video concludes over terrain dubbed 'bladed' due to its 500-meter-high ridges separated by kilometer-sized gaps. Due to its momentum, New Horizons cannot return and is now heading out of our Solar System.