Grab your red and green 3-D spectacles to fully appreciate New Horizons’ view of the “bladed” terrain just east of Tombaugh Regio, the informal name given to Pluto’s large heart-shaped surface feature. Formally named Tartarus Dorsa, they align from north to south, reach hundreds of feet high and are typically spaced a few miles apart. Click the image for a full-size version. Image credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI.One of the strangest landforms spotted by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft when it flew past Pluto last July was the “bladed” terrain just east of Tombaugh Regio, the informal name given to Pluto’s large heart-shaped surface feature.
No geology degree is necessary to see why the terrain is so interesting. Formally named Tartarus Dorsa, they align from north to south, reach hundreds of feet high and are typically spaced a few miles apart. This remarkable landform, unlike any other seen in our solar system, is perched on a much broader set of rounded ridges that are separated by flat valley floors.
On the global image below, the bladed terrain extends far to the east. New Horizons scientists have speculated about (but not yet agreed on) the terrain’s origins. Current theories include erosion from evaporating ices or deposition of methane ices; New Horizons researcher Orkan Umurhan takes an in-depth look at the terrain — and proposes another origin idea — in this recent NASA Web blog.
The amazing stereo view combines two images from the Ralph/Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC) taken about 14 minutes apart on 14 July 2015. The first was taken when New Horizons was 16,000 miles (25,000 kilometres) away from Pluto, the second when the spacecraft was 10,000 miles (about 17,000 kilometres) away. Best resolution is approximately 1,000 feet (310 metres).
Global view Image credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI.This global view of Pluto combines a Ralph/Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC) colour scan and an image from the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI), both obtained on 13 July 2015 — the day before New Horizons’ closest approach. The MVIC scan was taken from a range of 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometres), at a resolution of 20 miles (32 kilometres) per pixel. The corresponding LORRI image was obtained from roughly the same range, but has a higher spatial resolution of 5 miles (8 kilometres) per pixel. The red outline marks the large area of mysterious, bladed terrain extending from the eastern section of the large feature informally named Tombaugh Regio.
Astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have imaged what may be water vapour plumes erupting 125 miles (200 kilometres) off the surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa. Europa has a huge global ocean containing twice as much water as Earth’s oceans, but it is protected by a layer of extremely cold and hard ice of unknown thickness.
In a tantalising preview of what the surface of Pluto’s largest moon will look like in sharper future close-ups from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, this image from 1.5 hours before closest approach shows a depression with a peak in the middle.
Running low on fuel after completing the first global survey of Mercury, NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft could get an extra month of time at the solar system’s innermost planet thanks to a crafty new way of using helium gas to temporarily forestall the mission’s end next year.
