Having established the possibility of ice volcanoes on Pluto, NASA released the first images on Friday of what appears to be the first sighting of an ice volcano– an enormous structure named in honor of the Wright brothers.
According to CNET and EarthSky, the feature known as Wright Mons is a gargantuan 90 miles (150 km) across and 2.5 miles (4 km) high. If confirmed to be an ice volcano, also known as a cryovolcano, it would be the largest feature of its kind ever discovered in the outer solar system.
Credit: NASA
Wright Mons was spotted by the New Horizons spacecraft during its flyby of Pluto in July 2015, and it is one of two mountains on the surface of the dwarf planet thought to be a cryovolcano, the space agency said.
NASA believes that the cryovolcanoes, which eject a mix of ice, nitrogen, ammonia, and methane instead of the molten rock spewed out by volcanoes here on Earth, may have recently been active and may have played a role forming in the heart-shaped region of the dwarf planet.
Volcano may have been active relatively recently, NASA says
Scientists studying the images obtained by New Horizons said that they are “intrigued” by the red material sparsely distributed throughout the picture, and are curious as to why it is not more widespread throughout the landscape, the agency noted in a statement.
Furthermore, they are puzzled as to why there is only one confirmed impact crater on Wright Mons. This could indicate that the surface and a portion of the mountain’s underlying crust was formed relatively recently, suggesting that Wright Mons was an active volcano fairly late in Pluto’s geologic history.
“These are big mountains with a large hole in their summit, and on Earth that generally means one thing – a volcano,” New Horizons team member Oliver White told the Daily Mail Thursday. Previously, his colleague Jeff Moore had said that they were “not yet ready” to confirm that the two mountains were volcanoes, but added that they “sure look suspicious.”
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Image credit: NASA
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