On Tuesday, New Horizons phoned home to inform NASA that it successfully executed its flyby of Pluto, coming within 12,500km (7,767mi) of the dwarf planet's surface. Having collected a ton of data, the spacecraft has begun the long process of transmitting it all back to Earth.

Among the first images transmitted back to NASA was a stunning, high-resolution image of Pluto's surface. Pictured above, the image covers an area near Pluto's equator and shows a mountain range with peaks as high as 3,350m (11,000 feet). There's also a noticeable lack of impact craters, which indicates that the surface of Pluto is relatively young. "This is one of the youngest surfaces we’ve ever seen in the solar system," said Jeff Moore of New Horizons’ Geology, Geophysics and Imaging Team.

The New Horizons team estimated the age of the mountains at 100 million years old, and it's thought that the area shown above, which covers less than one percent of Pluto's surface, depicts a geologically active area.

Other icy worlds in the solar system, which are all moons orbiting gas giants, show evidence of active geological processes that are spurred by tidal interactions with the planets they orbit. There's nothing near enough to Pluto to spur the formation of mountain ranges.

“This may cause us to rethink what powers geological activity on many other icy worlds,” said GGI deputy team leader John Spencer of the Southwest Research Institute.

Meanwhile, on Charon...

Charon, Pluto's largest moon, had some surprises as well. Just like Pluto, Charon's surface is free of impact craters. Again, the New Horizons team says this is an indicator of a "relatively young surface that has been reshaped by geologic activity."

Taken at a distance of 466,000km (289,000mi), the picture of Charon shows details as small as 5km (3.1mi) across.

The moon's northern region shows some "enigmatic" features, including a region of dark material next to a "sharply bounded, angular feature." There are also canyons that are estimated to be roughly 8km deep. Once NASA gets more images of Charon from New Horizons, we should hopefully get a better understanding of what's happening on the surface of the moon.

We will have more on the day's revelations from New Horizons in a separate story this evening.