Pluto Contains Lot More Water Ice Than Previously Thought, According To NASA
- 8 years ago
New data gathered from the New Horizons spacecraft suggests that Pluto has a far more abundant reserve of water ice than previously believed.
NASA's New Horizons spacecraft recently returned data suggesting Pluto contains substantially more water ice than previously believed.
Such ice is said to form Pluto's crust or "bedrock" and is considered more stable than the ices above it--which shift and change with the seasons.
A false-color image released by NASA shows two different attempts to map out the dispersal of Pluto's water ice.
The left-hand map uses a less sensitive method only able to locate large concentrations of water ice, while the map on the right-hand side uses modeling to parse water ice from other forms.
NASA's New Horizons spacecraft recently returned data suggesting Pluto contains substantially more water ice than previously believed.
Such ice is said to form Pluto's crust or "bedrock" and is considered more stable than the ices above it--which shift and change with the seasons.
A false-color image released by NASA shows two different attempts to map out the dispersal of Pluto's water ice.
The left-hand map uses a less sensitive method only able to locate large concentrations of water ice, while the map on the right-hand side uses modeling to parse water ice from other forms.