Sir Edmund Hillary’s Name Taken to New Heights

A newly discovered mountain range on Pluto has been named Hillary Montes in homage to New Zealand mountaineer Sir Edmund Hillary, half of the pair who first climbed Mount Everest in 1953.

Tenzing Norgay, his fellow climber, has already been honoured with a Plutonian range. The Hillary mountains are comparable in height to the Appalachian Mountains of Earth, while the Norgay peaks are more like the Rockies.

“For many years, we referred to Pluto as the Everest of planetary exploration,” New Horizons mission principal investigator Alan Stern said in a statement. “It’s fitting that the two climbers who first summited Earth’s highest mountain, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, now have their names on this new Everest.”

Original article by Rachel Feltman, The Washington Post, July 24, 2015.