Scientists leading the New Horizons spacecraft mission have produced an updated panchromatic (black and white) global map of Pluto, the most complete yet.
It’s been ten months since New Horizons made its successful flyby of Pluto in July 2015, but the data is slowly but surely trickling in. So far we've seen about half of the 50GB total, so there is still a lot more to come.
The latest offering gives us the most detailed look at the icy dwarf planet yet: a map including all resolved images of Pluto's surface acquired between July 7-14.
The images contain at pixel resolutions ranging from 18 miles on the Charon-facing hemisphere (left and right edges of the map) to 770 feet on the hemisphere facing New Horizons during the spacecraft's closest approach on July 14, 2015 (map centre).
The non-encounter hemisphere was seen from much greater range and is, therefore, in far less detail, NASA said.
The latest images woven into the map were sent back to Earth as recently as 25 April. The team said it will be adding more photos as the spacecraft transmits the rest of its stored Pluto encounter data.
Nasa published papers using data from the voyage in March this year, revealing detailed information and analysis of the geology, atmosphere and behaviour of Pluto and its moons for the first time.
The team was able to date the age of Pluto's surface by counting how many craters were visible. They found that the dwarf planet had been geologically active throughout the past four billion years.
There were also signs of relatively recent geological formations. Nasa said that "the surface of Pluto’s informally-named Sputnik Planum, a massive ice plain larger than Texas, is devoid of any detectable craters and estimated to be geologically young - no more than ten million years old."
Pluto’s icy landscape is primarily made up of a combination of highly volatile and mobile methane, nitrogen and carbon monoxide ices, alongside inert and sturdy water ice.
But thanks to the mission, the dwarf planet's surface proved to be far more diverse and active than anyone had anticipated. Jeff Moore of Nasa's Ames Research Center said that observing Pluto and Charon up close “has caused us to completely reassess thinking on what sort of geological activity can be sustained on isolated planetary bodies in this distant region of the solar system”.
The remaining data from Pluto’s flyby is expected to reach us by early autumn. The team is also working on improved colour maps.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
