Pluto's Sputnik Planum
Image Credit: NASA, Johns Hopkins U./APL, Southwest Research Inst.
Explanation: Is there an ocean below Sputnik Planum on Pluto? The unusually smooth 1000-km wide golden expanse, visible in the
featured image from
New Horizons, appears segmented into
convection cells. But how was this region created? One
hypothesis now holds the
answer to be a great impact that stirred up an
underground ocean of salt water roughly 100-kilometers thick. The
featured image of
Sputnik Planum, part of the larger heart-shaped
Tombaugh Regio, was
taken last July and shows true details in
exaggerated colors. Although the robotic
New Horizons spacecraft is off on a
new adventure, continued computer-modeling of this surprising surface feature on
Pluto is likely to lead to more refined speculations about
what lies beneath.
No comments:
Post a Comment