LONDON: New photos of Pluto released by NASA reveal flows of nitrogen ice filling up craters, an atmosphere that could be on the verge of collapse, and a mysterious reddish haze extending 100 miles above the surface.
Scientists of the space agency’s historic New Horizons mission on Friday announced the discoveries with visible delight, with lead investigator Alan Stern declaring the Pluto system a “scientific wonderland”.
In a new set of high-resolution images of the dwarf planet’s surface, Stern and researcher Bill McKinnon showed evidence of nitrogen moving and spreading through a vast plain near the edge of Pluto’s large, heart-shaped region.
Mr McKinnon pointed out “a pattern that indicates the flow of viscous ice” that appears to move “just like glacial flow on the Earth”. While water ice on Pluto freezes to the point of immovable bedrock, nitrogen and methane ice are “soft and malleable”, he said.
Swirling lines show what appears to be a world of icy movement: old craters breached and filling up with ice, mountains encrusted on the ages by the flows, and movements of ice around “what look to be barrier islands”, in Mr McKinnon’s words.
The spacecraft’s flight past Pluto – the first time humanity has ever inspected the former planet at close range – also provided new photos from behind the dwarf planet, and revealed a haze layer in its atmosphere that astounded the scientists.
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