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OUTER PLANETS
Mysterious icy plains glimpsed on Pluto's surface
by Staff Writers
Miami (AFP) July 17, 2015


In the center left of Pluto's vast heart-shaped feature - informally named "Tombaugh Regio" - lies a vast, craterless plain that appears to be no more than 100 million years old, and is possibly still being shaped by geologic processes. This frozen region is north of Pluto's icy mountains and has been informally named Sputnik Planum (Sputnik Plain), after Earth's first artificial satellite. The surface appears to be divided into irregularly-shaped segments that are ringed by narrow troughs. Features that appear to be groups of mounds and fields of small pits are also visible. This image was acquired by the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on July 14 from a distance of 48,000 miles (77,000 kilometers). Features as small as one-half mile (1 kilometer) across are visible. The blocky appearance of some features is due to compression of the image. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute.

Smooth, icy plains have been spotted on the surface of Pluto, in the latest images released Friday from a NASA spacecraft that flew by the dwarf planet this week.

The plains are located north of Pluto's icy mountains, in the center-left of the heart shape that NASA has named "Tombaugh Regio," or the Tombaugh Region after Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered Pluto in 1930.

The area is lined with troughs that resemble frozen mud cracks on Earth.

There are no apparent craters, despite Pluto being in the Kuiper Belt, which scientists have described as a shooting gallery of cosmic debris.

NASA says the plain is no more than 100 million years old, and that Pluto is still being shaped by active geological processes.

But just what those processes are remains a mystery.

"This terrain is not easy to explain," said Jeff Moore, leader of the New Horizons Geology, Geophysics and Imaging Team at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California.

There are two theories being considered. Perhaps the plains were shaped by the contraction of surface materials, similar to what happens when mud dries, said NASA.

Or, they could be formed by a process called convection, where by some kind of heat from Pluto's interior reshapes the surface layer of frozen carbon monoxide, methane and nitrogen.

"These are the early days of a close encounter analysis," said Moore.

"As extraordinary and provocative as these images are, we are in the most preliminary stages of our investigations. We are still entertaining the widest range of hypotheses. We are acutely aware that jumping to conclusions leads to great peril."

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft zipped by Pluto on Tuesday, marking the first time in history that humankind has explored the distant dwarf planet.

The nuclear-powered spaceship traveled for nearly 10 years and three billion (4.8 billion kilometers) to reach Pluto, and now it is moving deeper into the Kuiper Belt region of space.


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OUTER PLANETS
Charon's Surprising Youthful and Varied Terrain
Laurel MD (SPX) Jul 16, 2015
Remarkable new details of Pluto's largest moon Charon are revealed in this image from New Horizons' Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI), taken late on July 13, 2015 from a distance of 289,000 miles (466,000 kilometers). A swath of cliffs and troughs stretches about 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) from left to right, suggesting widespread fracturing of Charon's crust, likely a result of i ... read more


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