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from the this-is-about-the-80's-band-right? dept.
A giant asteroid impact in the dwarf planet's past offers new insights into the possibility of an ocean beneath its surface.
Ever since NASA's New Horizons spacecraft flew by Pluto last year, evidence has been mounting that the dwarf planet may have a liquid ocean beneath its icy shell. Now, by modeling the impact dynamics that created a massive crater on Pluto's surface, a team of researchers has made a new estimate of how thick that liquid layer might be.
The study, led by Brown University geologist Brandon Johnson and published in Geophysical Research Letters, finds a high likelihood that there's more than 100 kilometers of liquid water beneath Pluto's surface. The research also offers a clue about the composition of that ocean, suggesting that it likely has a salt content similar to that of the Dead Sea.
Europa, Mars, Enceladus, Titan, and now...Pluto? Scientists who search for extra-terrestrial life focus on the presence of liquid water (or hydrocarbons, in the case of Titan), so the list of potential sites in the solar system is growing.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 26 2016, @06:46PM
Too bad the probe was only able to get details of essentially roughly 40% of Pluto. The other side is mostly a blur. Who knows what other interesting features we missed.
Pluto rotates about once every six days, and the probe was traveling so fast that it was too far away when the other side was visible.
It took the probe about 10 years to get to Pluto, even though it's one of the fastest probes ever launched (assisted in speed by a Jupiter flyby). If we want to see more sides of Pluto, we either have to send a much slower probe, say one that takes 30 years to get there, or send an orbiter, which would probably also have to be relatively slow, otherwise it would be too hard/expensive to enter orbit, since you have to roughly match the velocity of the planet to enter orbit. (Or maybe use Uranus or Neptune as a "gravity break", but they'd have to be in the right place.)
Maybe send quick "mini-probes" that only do one or two jobs, such as imaging. However, you still need a big antenna and fairly hefty power source to send all that data back from that distance such that there's going to be communication "overhead" no matter what. Thus, you might as well pay a little more and pack in other instruments.
Perhaps clone New Horizons and send it to visit the other half. Using the same design should save money.