NASA Finds Evidence Of Recently Flowing Liquid On Pluto's Surface

A new analysis of images collected during NASA's New Horizons spacecraft's 2015 flyby of Pluto has found evidence that liquid nitrogen is rising to the surface through cracks along the northern edge of Sputnik Planitia, a part of the dwarf planet's giant heart-shaped glacier. According to the researchers, this is the first evidence of recently flowing liquid on Pluto, reported NASA.

Alan Stern, principal investigator of the New Horizons mission and lead author of the study from the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, said that Pluto never stops surprising scientists. He added that the findings suggest liquids have recently reached Pluto's surface and also point to a new kind of time-variable feature on the dwarf planet.

Sputnik Planitia is a huge frozen nitrogen glacier on Pluto that is larger than the US states of Texas and Oklahoma combined. During the 2015 flyby, New Horizons captured images showing city-sized geological convection cells in the northern part of the region. These were separated by thin dark linear features and more diffuse dark markings, which suggested that liquid had flowed there in the past.

The new research, published on July 31 in The Planetary Science Journal, indicates that these dark linear and diffuse features may occasionally and temporarily become wet, most likely because liquid nitrogen rises to the surface from beneath the glacier. The study was carried out by planetary science experts who study Pluto along with specialists in terrestrial glaciology.

The researchers said that surface patterns in northern Sputnik Planitia have become darkened in ways that resemble glacial features on Earth that have been wetted by rain or by liquids emerging from below the surface. However, because Pluto's atmospheric and thermal conditions make liquid nitrogen rain physically impossible, the findings suggest that the liquid nitrogen is flowing upward from underneath the glacier.