The New Horizons team has released new images and videos of the towering mountains and newly revealed ice plains on Pluto.
The plains lie in the center of the dwarf planet’s heart region, now known as Tombaugh Regio. Photographed by New Horizons Long Range Reconnaissance Imager at a distance of 48,000 miles, they look like elephant skin — a series of polygons about 12 miles in width separated from each other by what appear to be shallow troughs.
This simulated flyover of Pluto’s Norgay Montes (Norgay Mountains) and Sputnik Planum (Sputnik Plain) was created with data captured by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft during its flyby on Tuesday.
“I saw this image for the first time and decided I was going to call it ‘not easy to explain terrain,’ ” said Jeff Moore, leader of the New Horizons Geology, Geophysics and Imaging team at NASA’s Ames Research Center.
Perhaps the most significant scientific finding in the image is the absence of impact craters, which suggests this surface is extremely young, geologically speaking.
“It couldn’t possibly be more than 100 million years old, and is possibly still being shaped to this day,” Moore said. “It could be only a week old, for all we know.”
The New Horizons team is wary of scientific speculation, especially because the data is so new, but they have identified two possible origin stories for the cracked-looking landscape.
It is possible that it was created by the contraction of surface materials on the dwarf planet, similar to what happens when mud dries or when you leave a pot of oatmeal on the stove for too long.
Alternatively, these shapes may have been formed by convection processes, the way wax rises up in a lava lamp. If that is the case, the convection would have taken place in a surface layer of the planet. The heat would have come from the planet’s interior.
The dark goose bump-shaped features in the right of the image are hills, but scientists do not yet know their height or composition.
Here too, a few different origin stories are on the table. Perhaps these hills formed from material that was pushed up through the troughs. Or they could be erosion-resistant nobs of material that have been left standing on the surface.
“When we get the data down, we can tell exactly how high they are and their shape, and that will help us understand better what is going on,” Moore said.
The team also identified dark streaks in the left of the picture. Moore said these might have been produced by winds blowing across Pluto’s icy surface. They also might be plume deposits.
To be clear, no plumes or geysers of material have been seen on Pluto, but Moore said scientists will be looking for them.
After a nearly decade-long journey, the New Horizons spacecraft zoomed past Pluto early Tuesday. The dwarf planet is now the most distant object ever visited by humanity. With this accomplishment, we’ve now documented every planet in the classical, nine-member solar system.
“In these early days, we are entertaining the widest ranges of possibilities,” he said. “Jumping to conclusions comes at great peril.”
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