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.
Far in the dwarf planet’s western hemisphere, scientists on NASA’s New Horizons mission have discovered what looks like a giant “bite mark” on Pluto’s surface. They suspect that the methane ice-rich surface on Pluto may be sublimating away into the atmosphere, exposing a layer of water-ice underneath.
Data from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft point to more prevalent water ice on Pluto’s surface than previously thought. Water ice is Pluto’s crustal “bedrock,” the canvas on which its more volatile ices paint their seasonally changing patterns. The new false-colour image is derived from observations in infrared light by the probe’s Ralph/Linear Etalon Imaging Spectral Array.
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