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Wednesday, September 16, 2015

Newest Pluto pictures show jumbled mountains, possible dunes

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The spigot has opened again, and Pluto pictures are pouring in once more from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft.

These newest snapshots reveal an even more diverse landscape than scientists imagined before New Horizons swept past Pluto in July, becoming the first spacecraft to ever visit the distant dwarf planet.

"If an artist had painted this Pluto before our flyby, I probably would have called it over the top — but that's what is actually there," said Alan Stern, New Horizons' principal scientist from Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

In one picture, dark ancient craters border much younger icy plains. Dark ridges also are visible that some scientists speculate might be dunes.

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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

NASA is still unaware that life does not require an atmosphere with oxygen.They still refer to the "building blocks of life" as though they have the final say of where life can exist and what enables life to exist.Life can exist in an environment totally davoid of oxygen because all life is NOT carbon based.