The American space agency NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has helped scientists clear several doubts about the dwarf planet Pluto. Now seeing the high-resolution images sent back home by the craft scientists have found a new range of water-ice mountains on the dwarf planet.

As per NASA, the newly identified mountain range is located in the dwarf planet's heart-shaped feature, called Tombaugh Regio after Pluto's discoverer, Clyde Tombaugh.

They stated that the mountains could be as high as that of the Appalachian Mountains on Earth, which reach a maximum height of about 6,000 feet.

These Plutonian mountains are smaller than a previously discovered Pluto mountain range, called the Norgay Montes, in honor of the first Nepalese man to scale Mount Everest in 1953, said scientists.

NASA said at the height of about 11,000 feet, the Norgay Montes matches the height of the Rockies on earth.

The newly discovered mountains were photographed on July 14 when New Horizons was 48,000 miles from Pluto on the day of its closest pass to the dwarf planet. The craft at its nearest point flew about 7,750 miles from the surface of Pluto.

The two mountain ranges are about 68 miles from one another and show that Pluto is full of a diversity of different features for scientists to study.

Jeff Moore, leader of the New Horizons geology, geophysics and imaging team, said, "There is a pronounced difference in texture between the younger, frozen plains to the east and the dark, heavily-cratered terrain to the west".