Buckle Up, Space Fans: A New Batch of Pluto Science Is Here

(pleasant music)

[Narrator] Less than a year ago, Pluto

was just a mess of pixels.

Now New Horizons had brought astonishing

resolution to the dwarf planet.

Past data dumps from New Horizons had

teased us with with features like ice volcanoes

and slow flowing nitrogen ice mud,

but now scientists are making even

more startling findings from Pluto,

and its' largest moon Charon.

To start, for such an icy place there's

new analysis that suggests that Pluto

has a warm interior,

possibly due to radioactive decay,

which has produced a tectonic landscape

of rocky ridges and alpine mountains.

But the sun plays a role too,

solar winds beat the planet's

methane and nitrogen atmosphere,

pockmarking its' surface, and producing

clouds and haze.

Scientists think some of that lost atmosphere

gets trapped by gravity from Pluto's largest

moon, Charon.

There it settles on the moon's poles,

where it freezes and turns red from

radiation exposure.

Of course the gasses could also come from

Charon, tearing down its' own surface,

like the Hulk.

Good news, interstellar futurists;

Pluto has four of its' own rocky moons,

that could be perfect depots when we start

shuttling towards the Kuiper Belt.

New Horizons is already trailblazing that route,

next stop: Kuiper Belt object 2014 MU 69.

Go little probe, go!