Sputnik Planitia tagged posts

Scientists have unravelled a fascinating new insight into how the landscape of the dwarf-planet Pluto has formed. A team of international researchers, including Dr Adrien Morison from the University of Exeter, has shown how vast ice forms have been shaped in one of the planet’s largest craters, Sputnik Planita.

Perhaps the most striking feature on Pluto’s surface, Sputnik Planitia is an impact crater, consisting of a bright plain, slightly larger than France, and filled with nitrogen ice.

For the new study, researchers have used sophisticated modelling techniques to show that t...

A “beating heart” of frozen nitrogen controls Pluto’s winds and may give rise to features on its surface, according to a new study.

Pluto’s famous heart-shaped structure, named Tombaugh Regio, quickly became famous after NASA’s New Horizons mission captured footage of the dwarf planet in 2015 and revealed it isn’t the barren world scientists thought it was.

Now, new research shows Pluto’s renowned nitrogen heart rules its atmospheric circulation...

The original black-and-white Pluto “landing” movie can be viewed at: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20160714-2

What would it be like to actually land on Pluto? This movie was made from more than 100 images taken by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft over 6 weeks of approach and close flyby in the summer of 2015. The video offers a trip down onto the surface of Pluto—starting with a distant view of Pluto and its largest moon, Charon—and leading up to an eventual ride in for a “landing” on the shoreline of Pluto’s informally named Sputnik Planitia.

To create a movie that makes viewers feel as if they’re diving into Pluto, mission scientists had to interpolate some of the panchromatic (black and white) frames based on what they know Pluto looks like to make it as sm...

Pluto, shown here in the front of this false-color image, has a bright ice-covered ‘heart.’ The left, roughly oval lobe is the basin provisionally named Sputnik Planitia. Sputnik Planitia appears directly opposite Pluto’s moon, Charon (back). Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI

Heart’s location and Charon’s existence led to heart’s formation. Pluto’s “icy heart” is a bright, two-lobed feature on its surface that has attracted researchers ever since its discovery by the NASA New Horizons team in 2015. Of particular interest is the heart’s western lobe, informally named Sputnik Planitia, a deep basin containing 3 kinds of ices – frozen nitrogen, methane and CO — and appearing opposite Charon, Pluto’s tidally locked moon...