A ‘Time Variable’ Feature on Pluto?

• New Horizons, which has been hibernating for over 10 months, has resumed active data collection from its instruments, including the Pluto Energetic Particle Spectrometer Science Investigation (PEPSSI) and the Student Dust Counter. The spacecraft is transmitting data back to Earth from its Solar Wind Attraction Probe (SWAP) and the Pluto Energetic Particle Spectrometer Science Investigation (PEPSSI) instruments. The findings suggest that the spacecraft continues to gather data from its instruments despite the hibernation period.
• The study published in the Planetary Science Journal indicates that liquid nitrogen has flowed beneath the northern region of Sputnik Planitia, a nitrogen glacier on Pluto. The research suggests that this process continues, with liquid nitrogen upwelling from beneath the glacier. The study also mentions that the surface of Sputnik Planitia is quite young, less than one million years old, and that the features observed must have formed since then.
• The findings are based on studies of a glacial surface far from Earth and involve liquid nitrogen rather than water. The paper reports that the surface patterns on this region of Sputnik Planitia have darkened in ways that are similar to Earth glaciers that have undergone their own wetting by subsurface liquid. The team worked with images from the Landsat 9 satellite that included the Greenland ice sheet. Computer models of glacial melting led by Orkan Umurhan (SETI Institute) reveal a transport mechanism to the surface and indicate an icy flow that can persist on the surface for short periods, which would account for the dark features.

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