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Patrick Thorne

17 Jul 15

Surface of Pluto “Like Rockies”

Patrick Thorne

17 Jul 15

NASA has confirmed that the surface of Pluto is very similar to the North American Rocky Mountains, opening up the possibility that future generations of humans, or indeed any particularly cool alien species, may be able to ski or board the distant dwarf planet one day, providing they have good thermals on.

The first detailed pictures of Pluto’s surface were revealed on Wednesday after NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft flew by after a nine year, four billion mile trip to the distant world.

“These are pretty significant mountains. They’d stand up respectably against mountain ranges on Earth like the Rockies,” said John Spencer, a mission scientist, adding that they appear to reach  around 11,000ft (3300m) in height and extend for several hundred miles across.

The mountains are believed to be quite young in comparison to the 4.6 billion year old solar system, perhaps only 100 million years old, and to be formed from water ice crowned with a thin layer of nitrogen and methane snow.  It’s the first time mountains formed with waster ice have been found in the solar system, except on giant ice moons orbiting other planets.

NASA has not yet revealed the likely quality of what we here at InTheSnow are calling ‘Pluto Powder’ but they have said they’ll be analysing the data received on Tuesday for at least the next year so we’re hoping more details will be forthcoming.

Temperatures on Pluto are believed to range between -223C and -233C so powder quality is likely to be good, we think.