MEXICO: Pluto has unveiled more of its secrets to NASA, enabling scientists to make over 50 sensational discoveries, from icy volcanoes to the tiny planet’s spinning moons.
NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft breezed past Pluto in mid-July. It was the first-ever close-up encounter with the dwarf planet full of secrets.
“The New Horizons mission has taken what we thought we knew about Pluto and turned it upside down,” said Jim Green, director of planetary science at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
The discovery of possible icy volcanoes on Pluto is one of the most surprising findings the scientists made. NASA had already mentioned the dwarf planet’s 3,500 meter icy peaks back in July, but now they’ve now had a chance to look at them more closely.
“These are big mountains with a large hole in their summit, and on Earth that generally means one thing – a volcano,” Oliver White, New Horizons postdoctoral researcher at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, said.
Unlike volcanoes on Earth, scientists expect that Pluto’s volcanoes spew a somewhat melted combination of icy materials, such as nitrogen, ammonia, or methane, rather than hot magma and rocks. Learning more about volcanoes on Pluto would allow NASA to gain a deeper understanding of the tiny globe’s geologic and atmospheric evolution.
“After all, nothing like this has been seen in the deep outer solar system,” said Jeffrey Moore, New Horizons Geology, Geophysics and Imaging team leader.
Scientists have also learned that Pluto’s surface developed in at least three stages, varying in age from ancient and intermediate, to relatively young. Pluto’s surface shows that it could be over 4 billion years old. NASA researchers determined this by counting crater impacts: The more crater impacts, the older a region is likely to be.
