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    Sputnik Planum tagged posts

    Pluto’s ‘Heart’ sheds light on a possible Buried Ocean

    September 24, 2016, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Pluto Sputnik Planum region

    Pluto’s informally-named Sputnik Planum region is mapped, with the key indicating a wide variety of units or terrains. Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI

    Ever since NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft flew by Pluto last year, evidence has been mounting that the dwarf planet may have a liquid ocean beneath its icy shell. Now, by modeling the impact dynamics that created a massive crater on Pluto’s surface, a team of researchers has made a new estimate of how thick that liquid layer might be. The study, led by Brown University geologist Brandon Johnson and published in Geophysical Research Letters, finds a high likelihood that there’s more than 100 km of water beneath Pluto’s surface...

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    Pluto as a Cosmic Lava Lamp: Giant Convective Cells continually refresh Pluto’s icy heart

    June 6, 2016, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Close-up of Sputnik Planum shows the slowly overturning cells of nitrogen ice. Boulders of water ice and methane debris (red) that have broken off hills surrounding the heart have collected at the boundaries of the cells. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

    Close-up of Sputnik Planum shows the slowly overturning cells of nitrogen ice. Boulders of water ice and methane debris (red) that have broken off hills surrounding the heart have collected at the boundaries of the cells. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

    A large section of Pluto’s icy surface is renewed by convection that replace older ices with fresher material. Combining computer models with topographic and compositional data gathered by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft last summer, New Horizons team members have been able to determine the depth of this layer of solid nitrogen ice within Pluto’s distinctive “heart” feature, Sputnik Planum – and how fast that ice is flowing.

    Mission scientists used state-of-the-art computer simula...

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    Secrets Revealed from Pluto’s ‘Twilight Zone’

    June 5, 2016, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Secrets revealed from Pluto's 'Twilight zone'

    Secrets revealed from Pluto's 'Twilight Zone'

    NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft took this stunning image of Pluto only a few minutes after closest approach on July 14, 2015. The image was obtained at a high phase angle -that is, with the sun on the other side of Pluto, as viewed by New Horizons. Seen here, sunlight filters through and illuminates Pluto’s complex atmospheric haze layers. The southern portions of the nitrogen ice plains informally named Sputnik Planum, as well as mountains of the informally named Norgay Montes, can also be seen across Pluto’s crescent at the top of the image. Looking back at Pluto with images like this gives New Horizons scientists information about Pluto’s hazes and surface properties that they can’t get from images taken on approach...

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    New Horizons returns 1st of the Best Images of Pluto during its July flyby

    December 6, 2015, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    The Mountainous Shoreline of Sputnik Planum: In this highest-resolution image from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft, great blocks of Pluto's water-ice crust appear jammed together in the informally named al-Idrisi mountains. "The mountains bordering Sputnik Planum are absolutely stunning at this resolution," said New Horizons science team member John Spencer of the Southwest Research Institute. "The new details revealed here, particularly the crumpled ridges in the rubbly material surrounding several of the mountains, reinforce our earlier impression that the mountains are huge ice blocks that have been jostled and tumbled and somehow transported to their present locations." Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI

    The Mountainous Shoreline of Sputnik Planum: In this highest-resolution image from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, great blocks of Pluto’s water-ice crust appear jammed together in the informally named al-Idrisi mountains. “The mountains bordering Sputnik Planum are absolutely stunning at this resolution,” said New Horizons science team member John Spencer of the Southwest Research Institute. “The new details revealed here, particularly the crumpled ridges in the rubbly material surrounding several of the mountains, reinforce our earlier impression that the mountains are huge ice blocks that have been jostled and tumbled and somehow transported to their present locations.” Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI

    These Pluto images are the best close-ups  that humans may see for decades...

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