Sputnik Planum region tagged posts

An image taken by the Ralph/Multispectral Visual Imaging Camera (MVIC) on NASA’s New Horizon spacecraft shows Sputnik Planum. Credit: Image courtesy of NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

On Pluto, icebergs floating in a sea of nitrogen ice are key to a possible explanation of the quilted appearance of the Sputnik Planum region of the dwarf planet’s surface. Data reported by NASA’s New Horizons New Horizons mission to the Pluto system shows unusual terrain in this region, which features a large deposit of nitrogen ice with a pattern of polygons that are thickest at their centers and dip at their edges. Purdue University researchers have proposed that the polygons seen in the images could be individual Rayleigh-Bénard convection cells.

“Evi...