NASA's New Horizon Team Makes New Discoveries About Pluto
NASA's New Horizons spacecraft made a Pluto flyby in July 2015. Since then, the spacecraft has been sending a number of incredible images and data back to Earth. The ground breaking data is being analyzed by the team on Earth continuously to reveal key Plutonian details.
Some of the data point toward the conditions that existed at the time of the solar system formation. The researchers believe that the data trickling on and off from the New Horizons spacecraft, because of its great distance from Earth, can help them understand the creation of the solar system.
A study published earlier in the Journal of Geophysical Research explained how the New Horizons team has found Pluto to behave like a planet, rather than a comet, because of its interaction with the solar wind. This discovery is important, especially considering the fact that the planet was demoted from the position of the ninth planet of the solar system a few years ago.
Recently, the New Horizons team reported observing the first occulations of Pluto's atmosphere by ultraviolet stars. This has enabled the team to make a number of discoveries related to the atmosphere of the planet, in addition to finding that it's upper atmosphere is 25 percent colder than what researchers had previously expected it to be.
On May 20, Friday, the New Horizons team reported spotting a "fretted" terrain on Pluto. The terrain has plain divided into polygon-shaped blocks that are separated by wide spaces or valleys. The researchers estimate these valleys to be several miles wide.
Such a terrain has never been observed previously in the entire solar system, except for a specific location on the red planet, Mars. The team described the terrain as "rare" and said that this type of terrain is not present anywhere on the surface of the planet.
The team suspects that the formation of the valleys might have taken place because of the movement of nitrogen ice glaciers or due to ice sublimation.
