NASA's New Horizons space probe, launched to study Pluto, its moons and nearby regions, has spotted a nearly-perfect heart-shaped area on the dwarf planet.
According to AFP, as quoted by Business Insider, the area seen on Pluto's rusty red surface has yet to be identified, as the piano-spaced robotic spacecraft was still too far away to get a clearer view. Scientists manning the space probe from NASA also saw the planet's surface dotted with bright points, possibly ice caps, and a mysterious dark shape they called "The Whale."
The heart-shaped area is described on cnet.com as measuring 1,200 miles (1,930.8 km) across, and its picture was taken at a distance of five million miles ( 8.045 million km).
According to universetoday.com, scientists suspect the heart-shaped region to have "fresh deposits of frost, perhaps including frozen methane, nitrogen and/or carbon monoxide, (that) form a bright coating."
"The next time we see this part of Pluto at closest approach, a portion of this region will be imaged at about 500 times better resolution than we see today," Jeff Moore of NASA was quoted by cnet.com as saying. "It will be incredible!"
The space probe is expected to make a historic flyby of Pluto on Tuesday, July 14. This space exploration mission involves the exploration of the dwarf planet, its five moons and the Kuiper Belt, a region of the Solar System located beyond the planets.
It is part of NASA's New Frontiers space program, a series of missions to conduct research on several planets in the Solar System, including Jupiter, Venus and Pluto. New Horizons was launched from Cape Canaveral on January 19, 2006. It made its closest approach to Jupiter on February 28, 2007, and after a period of hibernation and instrument checkouts, it began its approach to Pluto last January 15.
"We're at the 'man in the moon' stage of viewing Pluto," John Spencer of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, was quoted by the AFP as saying.
"It's easy to imagine you're seeing familiar shapes in this bizarre collection of light and dark features. However, it's too early to know what these features really are."
