Pluto has unknown mountains, plains, landscape, reveals data

High-resolution photographs from NASA’s New Horizon spacecraft show an unexpected range of mountains, glacial flow, smooth plains and other interesting landscape, according to a study released yesterday. 

The interplanetary spacecraft made the firstever visit to Pluto and its five moons last July. Those images, chemical analyses and other data show a complex, geologically active world 3 billion miles from Earth, with an underground ocean and volcanoes that appear to spew ice, five research papers published in this week’s Science journal said. 

“It’s a pretty wild place geologically,” said planetary scientist William McKinnon of Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. Another scientist described the diversity of landscapes as “astonishing.” How the varied terrain came to be remains a mystery for the distant Pluto, which has an average surface temperature of minus 380 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 229 degrees Celsius). 

Scientists suspect several processes at work, including vaporization of volatile ices, such as nitrogen, carbon monoxide and methane, into Pluto’s cold and unexpectedly compact atmosphere. Though smaller than Earth’s moon, Pluto likely still has enough internal heat from its formation some 4.5 billion years ago to help maintain its most prominent feature, a smooth, 620-mile (1,000-km) wide, heart-shaped basin known as Sputnik Planum. 

Relatively young mountains west of Sputnik Planum and mounds to the south are harder to explain. Scientists suspect both rest on blocks of water ice, though how that came to exist on Pluto is unknown. “We are puzzled by almost everything,” said Alan Stern, the New Horizons mission’s lead scientist.