Youthful Frozen Plains Cover Pluto’s Big ‘Heart’ – Spectacular New Images from New Horizons

universetoady.com ^ | on July 17, 2015 | Ken Kremer

[BenLurkin]

A vast, craterless plain of Plutonian ice no more than 100 million years old and centered amidst Pluto’s big ‘heart’ was unveiled in spectacular new imagery taken by NASA’s resounding successful New Horizons mission, during its history making rapid transit through the Pluto-Charon binary planet system barely three days ago, on Tuesday, July 14.

The jaw dropping new imagery was publicly released today, July 17, by NASA and scientists leading the New Horizons mission during a media briefing, and has already resulted in ground breaking new scientific discoveries at the last planet in our solar system to be visited by a spacecraft from Earth.

...

“Over 50 gigabits of data were collected during the encounter and flyby periods,” New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado, said during the media briefing.

“So far less than 1 gigabit of data has been returned.”

It will take some 16 months for all the Pluto flyby data to be transmitted back to Earth.

[BenLurkin]

This annotated view of a portion of Pluto’s Sputnik Planum (Sputnik Plain), named for Earth’s first artificial satellite, shows an array of enigmatic features. The surface appears to be divided into irregularly shaped segments that are ringed by narrow troughs, some of which contain darker materials. Features that appear to be groups of mounds and fields of small pits are also visible. This image was acquired by the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on July 14 from a distance of 48,000 miles (77,000 kilometers). Features as small as a half-mile (1 kilometer) across are visible. Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI

[Dr. Bogus Pachysandra]

Oooh! It looks like a brain!

[BitWielder1]

“So far less than 1 gigabit of data has been returned.”
It will take some 16 months for all the Pluto flyby data to be transmitted back to Earth.

They must be using the same network I'm using.

[VanDeKoik]

Planetary geologist are going to be on cloud nine for years.

Makes me want to get back into it.

[Buckeye McFrog]

“Dark Material Within Troughs”? Alien latrines??

[centurion316]

This looks like tundra landscape where ice wedges tend to form in hexagonal or other polygon patterns.

[Boogieman]

Pluto better watch out for zombie planets...

[Alas Babylon!]

That’s funny but there actually is a reason—power.

The work is too far from the sun to use solar panels—not enough sun light.

So it has a small plutonium (—which is, I suppose, just the right element to power a probe to Pluto!—) reactor on it, but it can only consistently generate about 200 watts at any given time!

So they’re using the low and slow transmission to get the bits back to us ‘cause their modem is lo-po!

[Boogieman]

Or kind of like dry lake beds, where the ground cracks as it dries out and shrinks:

[BenLurkin]

Slow pygmies.

[AlmaKing]

Like 300 baud?

[colorado tanker]

Good stuff ping.

[cripplecreek]

The photos we’ve seen so far are still from a long way out.

[dadfly]

God is great! i love the “heart.” and ice sheet? as in water?

[outofsalt]

Pluto has flea bites and eczema.

[JPG]

[Seruzawa]

Close in photos have to be photoshopped first to cover up Disney copyrighted features.

[Sawdring]

They used that example in the article.

[centurion316]

That’s a very good observation, but dry lake beds tends to be asymmetrical, whereas the arctic landforms are much more symmetrical. Of course, we are talking about a completely environment than has ever been present on our planet.

Dry lakes present their appearance on the shrinking of the surface material, wheres the tundra landscape occurs from an expansion of surface and just sub-surface features by expansion of ice wedges formation.

My boat is so small and the ocean is so great. We are so ignorant, aren’t we.

[JoeProBono]