One of the surprises of the New Horizons mission was finding water ice mountains on Pluto, that quite possibly are floating on a subsurface ocean of liquid water.NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI
Pluto’s Majestic Mountains, Frozen Plains and Foggy Hazes: 15 minutes after its closest approach to Pluto, New Horizons captured this near-sunset view of the rugged, icy mountains and flat ice plains extending to Pluto’s horizon.NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI
Researchers interested in the exploration of Pluto and Charon have put together a self-organized community white paper on Pluto Follow On Missions. In 2015, the binary Pluto-Charon and its small satellites were viewed up close by the New Horizons mission. New Horizons returned stunning images that revealed Pluto as a geologic and compositionally diverse world. The white paper discusses many of the unexpected results returned by New Horizons, and discusses the potential for a follow-up mission to study the Pluto system in more detail.
The paper can be viewed at http://bit.ly/PFO_WhitePaper
For further information, contact Kelsi Singer, ksinger@boulder.swri.edu
The New Horizons mission and Pluto feature in Issue #4 of Astrobiology: The Story of our Search for Life in the Universe, available at: < a href=“https://astrobiology.nasa.gov/resources/graphic-histories/”>https://astrobiology.nasa.gov/resources/graphic-histories/
Related Links
New Horizons Mission Page (NASA Astrobiology)
Outer Planets Assesment Group (OPAG) Findings
Gravity Assist: The Kuiper Belt with Alan Stern
Does Pluto Have The Ingredients For Life?