Pluto Has an Ocean of Liquid Water Surrounded by a 40-80 km Ice Shell

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NASA's New Horizons spacecraft captured this image of Sputnik Planitia — a glacial expanse rich in nitrogen, carbon monoxide and methane ices — that forms the left lobe of a heart-shaped feature on Pluto’s surface. SwRI scientists studied the dwarf planet’s nitrogen and carbon monoxide composition to develop a new theory for its formation.

Nguyen is a graduate student in Earth, environmental, and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis , while Dr. McGovern is a Senior Staff Scientist with the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston. Their paper, “. The study is part of Nguyen’s Ph.D. research at Washington University, where he is an Olin Chancellor’s Fellow and a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow.

For decades, planetary scientists assumed Pluto was far too cold to support an interior ocean. Pluto orbits well beyond the Solar System’s “Frost Line,” the boundary beyond which volatile elements become solid. With an average surface temperature of -229 °C , even nitrogen and methane become as solid as rock. As Nguyen indicated in a recent interview with, “Pluto is a small body.

 

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