NASA unveiled the first of the long-awaited photographs taken by the New Horizons spacecraft during its Pluto flyby that took place on July 14. They reveal among other things the presence of mountains even 3,500 meters (11,000 feet) high. A photo of Charon taken on July 13 was also released and it shows several fractures on its crust. These close-up images show geological activity on both Pluto and Charon, an unexpected fact.

The most interesting Pluto photograph among the first sent by the New Horizons spacecraft after its flyby shows an equatorial region near the base of the heart-shaped feature. It shows a mountain range whose peaks reach 3,500 meters (11,000 feet) that were formed no more than a hundred million years ago. In geological terms, these are young mountains.

These mountains, along with the scarcity of craters, clearly indicate that there’s a geological activity on Pluto. The interesting thing is that Charon, its main moon, shows a surface with signs of geological activity as well. There are fractures that can be very deep, even 9 km (almost 6 miles), and again there are very few craters.

What can generate that activity of Pluto and Charon? These two bodies are too small for their gravity to generate it like Jupiter does on its moons. On Pluto it’s possible that there’s an underground activity caused by the presence of radioactive materials that emit energy during their decay.

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On Pluto there may also be a volcanic activity, though not the kind like on Earth. They would be cryovolcanoes, more similar to geysers, generated by the sublimation of volatile elements such as nitrogen, methane and carbon monoxide. However, the presence of mountains so high indicates that there can be only a thin crust of volatile elements because they can be supported only by a more robust ice such as that of water.

As for Charon, the deep chasms opened by the fractures in its crust that stretch for about 1000 km (about 600 miles) suggest some kind of internal geological process. NASA scientists are waiting for higher resolution photographs that might allow them to understand something more about it.

The amount of data collected by the New Horizons space probe is so big and the transmission rate so low that it will take about 16 months to send them all. The first photos have already offered a few surprises about Pluto and Charon. This mission aims exactly to discover what we didn’t know yet and is having great success!