It may have been several weeks since NASA's New Horizons (NH) spacecraft had its historic up-close encounter with the solar system's most beloved Kuiper Belt Object, but new data and images from the Pluto party are still coming in—as it will through late 2016, according to the agency.
This extended scientific pipeline is due to 1) the sheer distance between NH and the Earth (nearly 3 billion miles away; even traveling at the speed of light, any communications take around 4.5 hours), and 2) the NASA bureaucracy machine.
We were all initially spoiled after being treated to some stunning shots of the Plutonian system directly following the fly by—those first images were highly condensed by NH before transmission to Earth, and the photos were fast-tracked for release to sate the public's thirst for all-things-Pluto.
A few weeks' worth of fly-by data has indeed resulted in some surprising things about Pluto and its five moons. Last week NASA threw out some especially tasty new tidbits about that heart-shaped plane on Pluto's southern hemisphere and some new insights into Pluto's surprisingly dynamic atmosphere.
"We knew that a mission to Pluto would bring some surprises, and now—10 days after closest approach — we can say that our expectation has been more than surpassed," said John Grunsfeld, NASA's associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate, in a NASA blog post. "With flowing ices, exotic surface chemistry, mountain ranges, and vast haze, Pluto is showing a diversity of planetary geology that is truly thrilling."
Pluto's atmosphere is proving far more robust than anyone anticipated. The hydrocarbon atmosphere reaches some 20 miles above the surface and is thought to be formed by ultraviolet sunlight breaking up methane gas. The atmosphere actually creates a sort of haze around the dwarf planet, as can be seen in the backlit image above. It was initially thought that Pluto would be too warm (yes, too warm) for these hydrocarbon hazes to form close to the surface, but our understanding of Plutonian weather is beginning to change.
Additional images have shown moving ice flows on Pluto's surface—this hints at signs of recent geologic activity. These flows have been spotted in Pluto's decidedly heart-shaped feature (known as "Tombaugh Region") and appear to be recent (and maybe even still in the process of flowing). And they're not completely dissimilar to how glaciers on Earth move.
Awesome. And the awesomeness only promises to continue for months moving forward—then NH will start returning a whole new breed of awesomeness after it travels further into the Kuiper belt.