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Launched in 2006, the New Horizons spacecraft flew past the distant dwarf planet Pluto on 14th July 2015.
The information New Horizons will send back to Earth over the next year or so should get everyone excited about Pluto & other objects in the Kuiper Belt, and will ultimately add to our understanding of the whole Solar System.
NASA posts videos about the New Horizons venture here. “Seeing Pluto in a New Light” is over an hour of interviews with the main scientists, but it’s where I learnt the information below. There will be a new video about Pluto on Friday 24th August. (Most of the other videos are short.)
Pluto is an isolated small planet showing geological activity (possible geysers and volcanoes), because it doesn’t have lots of impact craters (whereas our Moon has plenty of them). Triton, orbiting Neptune, also has few impact craters. Astronomers though that Triton’s geological activity (such as the tidal energy Earth experiences from the Moon) was because the giant gas planet Neptune’s gravity is pulling (tugging) on Triton. But there is no giant gas planet near Pluto. So this week we have learnt that a small solitary dwarf planet, far far away from the heat energy of the Sun is capable of having something like a warm centre with energy that can create volcanoes or geysers (or something similar) to make its surface cover over any crater holes.
This ABC News article has some great photos and a very helpful half-minute video at the bottom:
The bedrock of Pluto’s mountains must be made of water-ice rather than rock. Pluto seems to have a nitrogen-ice coating (frosting). Pluto is losing lots of nitrogen gas from its atmosphere into space. So there must be a way nitrogen is being released from the planet’s insides, possibly from geysers and or volcanoes. Is Pluto farting nitrogen?
American, Clyde William Tombaugh, discovered Pluto, so the scientists want to name the heart shaped region after him (Tombaugh Regio).
Sometimes it is the silly things like this issue with Disney’s cartoon character Pluto, that help us remember names. It may also be why some of us love to hear about the planet Pluto!
A POETIC ANGLE: Are we in love with Pluto?
Pluto has a smooth heart-shaped icy-bright area on its surface. Pluto has also amazed scientists by having some kind of geological activity going on inside it. This means it ought to have something warm inside … like a heart!