The New Horizons team has informally named Pluto’s icy mountain ranges for the first two men known to reach the peak of Mount Everest, though the two ranges found so far are not Himalayan in stature — more the height of the Rockies and the Appalachians.
The taller range is named Norgay Montes, in honor of Nepalese mountaineer Tenzing Norgay, and the smaller range is named for Sir Edmund Hillary.
The composition information is not yet transmitted, but Stern said the height of those mountains could not be supported by the frozen gases omnipresent on Pluto’s surface. He predicted they will be identified as water ice.
