Pluto's Sputnik Planum
Is there an ocean below Sputnik Planum on Pluto?
The unusually smooth 1000-km wide golden expanse, visible in the
featured image from
New Horizons, appears segmented into
convection cells.
But how was this region created?
One hypothesis now holds the
answer to be a great impact that stirred up an
underground ocean of salt water roughly 100-kilometers thick.
The
featured image of
Sputnik Planum, part of the larger heart-shaped
Tombaugh Regio, was
taken last July
and shows true details in
exaggerated colors.
Although the robotic
New Horizons
spacecraft is off on a
new adventure,
continued computer-modeling of this surprising surface feature on
Pluto
is likely to lead to more refined speculations about
what lies beneath.