Pluto
Freezing Ocean Might Not Be Responsible for Cryovolcanic Flows on Pluto’s Moon, Charon
In a recent study scheduled to be published in the journal Icarus in March 2023, a team of researchers led…
Will Pluto finally answer, ‘Are we alone?’
We previously examined how Neptune’s largest moon, Triton, could answer the longstanding question: Are we alone? With its nitrogen geysers…
Charon’s Red Cap at its North Pole? We Might Have an Answer
Pluto’s largest moon, Charon, started off as a beautiful, smooth red grape until someone came along, mostly peeled it, tried…
Eight Missions are Getting Extensions, Most Exciting: OSIRIS-REx is Going to Asteroid Apophis
NASA has granted mission extensions to eight different planetary missions, citing the continued excellent operations of the spacecraft, but more…
Pluto’s Orbit is Surprisingly Close to an Unstable Zone
A new study has revealed new insights into Pluto's orbit, which is subject to a lot of chaotic perturbance over…
Pluto’s Surface was Shaped by Ice Volcanoes
For all of Earth's geological diversity and its long history, the planet has never had ice volcanoes. But Pluto has.…
Now We Know Why Pluto has These Strange Features on its Surface
After New Horizons made its close flyby of Pluto in July of 2015, scientists were astounded at the incredible closeup…
New Horizons is Now 50 Astronomical Units Away From the Sun
As the New Horizons spacecraft hurtles out towards interstellar space, it has now reached an historical milestone. On April 17,…
Pluto has Snowcapped Mountains, But Why?
We can thank NASA's New Horizons spacecraft for opening our eyes up to Pluto's complexity. On July 14th, 2015, the…
Pluto and Other Kuiper Belt Objects Started Out With Water Oceans, and Have Been Slowly Freezing Solid for Billions of Years
It seems unlikely that an ocean could persist on a world that never gets closer than 30 astronomical units from…