New Horizons is officially out of its nine-day close surveillance period—the time when it passed closest to Pluto and could collect the most important data about the distant icy rock. Now that its attention is less dominated by collecting science and more focused on sending it home, the real fun begins for the New Horizons mission scientists. On Friday, some of the team's principals sat down to present some of the probe's freshest downlinks, as well as let us all know that New Horizons fever would be winding down to a steady pulse—updates each Friday, rather than every time new data comes in.

Speaking of pulse, one of the first announcements today came from principal investigator Alan Stern, who showed some new information on Pluto's massive heart-shaped plain. The area, now officially named Tombaugh Regio, happens to coincide with a region of frozen carbon monoxide. According to Will Grundy, New Horizons' expert on ices, the layer is at least a centimeter thick. But he can't say for sure whether it is being deposited from above, or upwelling from below.