NASA's New Horizons has recently sent a new batch of images of Pluto which includes spectral maps and high-resolution images of the dwarf planet. One such image also shows a 'snakeskin' texture that appears covering wide area.

As per NASA experts, the most exciting thing about these images is that like most of the high-resolution views being beamed back from the Kuiper belt, planetary scientists only have a vague idea as to what might be going on.

William McKinnon, New Horizons Geology, Geophysics and Imaging (GGI) team deputy lead from Washington University in St. Louis, said the images show a unique and puzzling landscape stretching over hundreds of miles.

"It looks more like tree bark or dragon scales than geology. This'll really take time to figure out; maybe it's some combination of internal tectonic forces and ice sublimation driven by Pluto's faint sunlight", he said.

The craft has also sent back home some more stunning imagery including the highest-resolution color view of Pluto yet, with zoomed-in portions of the tiny world's heart-shaped region, on a plane informally called Sputnik Planum.

The region, shown in images, also appears to have small rocky islands of material focused around the adjoining 'cells' of icy material. Scientists, after doing a close analysis of the cells, have found that the icy surface is of a corrugated texture.

Mission scientists think that the texture may have formed due to sublimation processes in which the ice gets heated and turns into gases, creating Pluto's thin atmosphere.

Will Grundy, New Horizons surface composition team leader from Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Ariz., said the interesting thing about it is that New Horizons has the ability to make exquisite compositional maps across the surface of Pluto, and that'll be crucial to resolving how enigmatic Pluto works.