Dwarf Planet Pluto Might Hide an Ocean Under Its Surface

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft took this image of Pluto with its Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on July 13, 2015.

The latest spectra from New Horizons Ralph instrument reveal an abundance of methane ice, but with striking differences from place to place across the frozen surface of Pluto. She was the farthest and most mysterious planet, the one we couldn’t quite see and most wanted to. It became the first country to visit the eight major planets in our Solar System and the first to send an exploratory satellite into the Kuiper belt. Gladman thinks we could learn even more from some of the smaller icy chunks in that region – one of which New Horizons may visit in 2018, if it gets the funding. As a result, Pluto was deemed not to be a planet, but a member of the newly defined category of “dwarf planets”.

IGN News notes that NASA’s associate administrator John Grunsfeld said in a statement, “We knew that a mission to Pluto would bring some surprises, and now – 10 days after closest approach – we can say that our expectation has been more than surpassed”. If it does exist, such an ocean would be nestled between Pluto’s icy surface and a rocky core.

About one decade after Charon’s discovery, its orbit around Pluto was aligned so that, for a few years, from our vantage point here on Earth Pluto and Charon periodically passed in front of and behind each other; this allowed us to determine their approximate diameters as being 1470 and 750 miles, respectively. Astronomers demoted Pluto from our ninth planet to a “dwarf planet“, based mainly on its small size.

Mr. Chairman, it is not an overstatement to say that NASA’s planetary science program has been extraordinarily successful, and that fact is a tribute to the hard work and perseverance of NASA, its contractors, and the space research community. Pluto has five moons and the first high resolution images were already released. “It is an honor to have a character you helped create be given such an esteemed recognition”, William Shatner told Mashable.

Now, thanks to maps the New Horizons team plans to submit to the worldwide Astronomical Union (the official governing body for names of celestial objects), we know the answer.

Now that the New Horizons mission has provided NASA with the most detailed images yet of Pluto and its largest moon Charon, it’s time for scientists to put names to the previously unknown surface features.

In 2005, a team of researchers from the Palomar Observatory discovered a dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt, naming it Eris.

Pluto has been in the spotlight this month with incredible images revealing the surface and atmosphere of the dwarf planet. It’s not even in the red like Mars.

Models suggest the hazes form when ultraviolet sunlight breaks up methane gas particles – a simple hydrocarbon in Pluto’s atmosphere. The images of the tiniest moons of Pluto will only be available by October, till then they remain a mystery to us. According to the leader of New Horizons Geology, Bill McKinon, the -390 degrees Fahrenheit last recorded on the dwarf planet’s surface make it impossible for the flowing ice to be formed out of water, so it’s not a possible source.