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ByMarciaDunn The Associated Press CAPE CANAVERAL, FLA. Vastfrozenplainsexistnext door to Pluto's big, rugged mountains sculpted of ice, scientists said Friday, three days after humanity's first- ever flyby of the dwarf planet. The New Horizons spacecraft team revealed close-up photos of those plains, which they're al- ready unofficially calling Sputnik Planum after the world's first man-made satellite. "Have a look at the icy frozen plains of Pluto," principal scientist Alan Stern said during a brief- ing at NASA headquarters. "Who would have expected this kind of complexity?" Stern described the pic- tures coming down from 3 billion miles away as "beautiful eye candy." "I'm still having to re- mind myself to take deep breaths," added Jeff Moore, head of the New Horizons geology team at NASA's Ames Research Center in California. "I mean, the landscape is just astound- ingly amazing." Spanning hundreds of miles, the plains are lo- cated in the prominent, bright, heart-shaped area of Pluto. Like the moun- tains unveiled Wednesday, the plains look to be a rel- atively young 100 million years old — at the most. Scientists speculate in- ternal heating — perhaps from icy volcanoes or gey- sers— might still be shap- ing these crater-free re- gions. "This could be only a week old for all we know," Moore said. He stressed that scientists have no hard evidence of erupting, gey- ser-like plumes on Pluto — yet. Another possibility could be that the terrain, like fro- zen mud cracks on Earth, formed as a result of con- traction of the surface. The plains — which in- clude clusters of smooth hills and fields of small pits — are covered with irregu- lar-shaped, or polygon, sec- tions that look to be sepa- rated by troughs. Each sec- tion is roughly 12 miles across. The height of the hills is not yet known, nor their origin. It could be the hills were pushed up from below, or are knobs surrounded by eroded terrain, accord- ing to Moore. The fields of pits resemble glacial fields on Earth. As of Friday's news con- ference, New Horizons was just over 2 million miles past Pluto and operating well. The spacecraft on Tuesday became the first visitor to the 4.5 billion- year-old Pluto, sweeping within 7,700 miles of its icy surface after a journey of 9½ years. It represented the last planetary stop on NA- SA's grand tour of the solar system, begun a half-cen- tury ago. "I'm a little biased, but I think the solar system saved the best for last," Stern, a Southwest Research Insti- tute planetary scientist, told reporters. On Wednesday — just one day after the historic flyby — Stern and his team unveiled zoom-in photos showing 11,000-foot moun- tain ranges on Pluto, akin to the Rockies here on Earth. The plains are the mountains' neighbors to the north. The peaks are now known, informally at least, as the Norgay Montes. Tenz- ing Norgay was the Sherpa guide for Sir Edmund Hill- ary when they conquered Mount Everest in 1953. The huge, encompass- ing heart-shaped region al- ready bears the last name of Clyde Tombaugh, the late American astronomer who discovered Pluto in 1930. New Horizons' science team promised Friday that the data will allow them to produce elevation maps of both Pluto and its big moon Charon. It will take 16 months to transmit to Earth all the data collected during the close encounter. The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Labora- tory in Laurel, Maryland, is managing the $720 mil- lion mission, which be- gan with a launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, in 2006 — months before Pluto was demoted from a full-fledged planet. Stay tuned, meanwhile, for NASA's next Pluto up- date — next Friday. The pictures should keep get- ting better and better. "This is just a taste of what I'm sure is in the un- sent data" yet to come, Moore said. NEW HORIZONS 'B ea ut if ul e ye c an dy ': F ro ze n pl ai ns i n Pl ut o' s he art NASA—JHUAPL—SWRI Pluto's largest moon Charon, le , with a captivating feature, a depression with a peak in the middle, is shown in the upper le corner of the inset image at right. BREAST CANCER RIC FRANCIS — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE Claudia Alexander, right, project manager for Galileo, waits in the mission control room in Pasadena along with engineer Nagin Cox, center, and others for the spacecra to take its final plunge into Jupiter. By John Rogers The Associated Press LOS ANGELES Claudia Al- exander, a brilliant, pioneer- ing scientist who helped di- rect NASA's Galileo mission to Jupiter and the interna- tional Rosetta space-explo- ration project, has died at age 56. The Jet Propulsion Lab- oratory in Pasadena, where Alexander worked as the U.S. leaderontheRosettaProject, announced her death Thurs- day. JPL officials said she died Saturday after a long battle with breast cancer. As word of her passing spread through the science community, tributes poured in. "Claudia brought a rare combination of skills to her work as a space explorer," said Charles Elachi, JPL's director. "Of course, with a doctorate in plasma phys- ics, her technical creden- tials were solid. But she also had a special understanding of how scientific discovery affects us all, and how our greatest achievements are the result of teamwork." Alexander was an ac- claimed scientist who con- ducted landmark research on the evolution and inte- rior physics of comets, Jupi- ter and its moons, solar wind and other subjects. She au- thored or co-authored more than a dozen scientific pa- pers. The University of Mich- igan, where she earned her doctorate, named her its Woman of the Year in 1993. She was the last project manager for the National Aeronautics and Space Ad- ministration's Galileo mis- sion, in which twin space- craft launched in 1989 made an unprecedented trip to Ju- piter, using the Earth's and the planet Venus' gravity to propel themselves there. Along the way, they provided unprecedented observations of the solar system. At the time of her death, Alexander was project man- ager for the United States' involvement in the inter- national Rosetta Project, which marked the first time a spacecraft rendezvoused with a comet. BorninCanadaandraised in Northern California's Sil- icon Valley, she joined JPL soon after completing grad- uate school. Shehadoriginallyplanned onbecomingajournalist,but her parents steered her in another direction, insisting she pursue something that would better serve society. "My parents blackmailed me," she once said. "I really wanted to go to the Univer- sity of California at Berkeley, but my parents would only agree to pay for it if I ma- jored in something useful, like engineering. I hated en- gineering." After she won an engi- neering internship to NA- SA's Ames Research Insti- tute, and her boss there dis- covered she was spending most of her time sneaking over to the space building, he sent her there. A career as a renowned space scien- tist had been born. Still, the friendly, outgoing scientist wanted it known she was not strictly a sci- ence nerd. "I'm not a brilliant white- coated Jimmy Neutron trapped in a lab," she once told her alma mater's Mich- igan Engineer magazine, making reference to the kid- scientist cartoon character. She loved horseback rid- ing,shesaid,aswellascamp- ing, hanging out in coffee houses and writing science fiction. "When I was in graduate school, I went horseback rid- ing every Sunday in the win- ter, and I got so I lived for that," she recalled. Still, she added that her favorite college memory was "staying up all night with friends arguing about which one of us was going to do the most for mankind with the research we were doing." JPL officials said two me- morial services are planned, one in Los Angeles on July 25 and another in San Jose on Aug. 8. Information on survivors was not immediately avail- able. Renowned scientist who helped le ad m is si on t o Ju pi te r di es ByMatthewBrown andMattVolz The Associated Press BILLINGS,MONT. Threetank cars leaked an estimated 35,000 gallons of oil after a train hauling crude from North Dakota derailed in ru- ral northeastern Montana, thelatestinaseriesofwrecks raising concerns across the U.S. and Canada, authorities said Friday. No one was reported in- jured in the accident Thurs- day night that temporarily led to the evacuation of some homesandfollowedrecentoil traincrashesincludinga2013 derailmentinQuebecthatex- ploded and killed 47 people. A hazardous-materials teamcontainedthespillwith earthendams,andoildidnot affectanywaterways,accord- ingtoapreliminaryreportby Michael Turnbull of the U.S. Department of Transporta- tion to Montana's Public Ser- vice Commission. Unlike many prior acci- dents, no explosions or fire were reported after the Bur- lington Northern Santa Fe train derailed about 5 miles east of the small town of Cul- bertson, near the North Da- kota border. But about 30 people were evacuated from their homes within a half-mile radius, Turnbullsaid.Thatorderwas lifted Friday morning. There was no immediate explanation of what caused more than 20 cars to topple fromthetrain,whichhad106 loaded crude oil tank cars, two buffer cars and four lo- comotives. LATEST IN SERIES OF WRECKS 35 ,0 00 g al lon s of o il s pi ll s a er Montana train derailment C a l l 8 7 7- 4 D A D 4 11 o r v i s i t w w w . f a t h e r h o o d . g o v be a dad today. 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