The first published findings from NASA's New Horizons mission to Pluto confirm that the dwarf planet has geological features that resemble those found on Mars and various moons in the Solar System.
NASA's spacecraft flew past Pluto in July, sending back reams of data that have been analysed by Alan Stern at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, and his colleagues. Broad, bright plains on Pluto known as Sputnik Planum seem to be covered by nitrogen glaciers; these quickly erase craters made by crashing asteroids. Nearby lies the dark Cthulhu region, which is covered in craters that are thought to be up to 4 billion years old.
Pluto also hosts unique features, such as 'snakeskin' terrain that may have been sharpened into ridges over time as material froze and then sublimated away.
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Pluto hosts wildly varying terrain. Nature 526, 478 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/526478a
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/526478a
