Take a sneak peek at Pluto

Within Pluto’s informally named Vega Terra region is a field of eye-catching craters that looks like a cluster of bright haloes scattered across a dark landscape. NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has revealed that the floors and terrain between the craters show signs of water ice, but exactly why bright methane ice settles on these crater rims and walls is a mystery.

Data collected by NASA’s New Horizons probe and ESA’s Rosetta mission suggest Pluto might have formed from the accretion of a billion or so smaller bodies similar to Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko and other Kuiper Belt objects.

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. Methane ice in the dwarf planet’s north polar cap is diluted in a thick, transparent slab of nitrogen ice.