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Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet in 2006, but NASA’s New Horizons mission discovered interesting features such as ice volcanoes, floating mountains, and rapidly twirling moons. Pluto’s hills and small mountains are made of ice and ripple in a glacial sea of nitrogen. The mountains are likely as big as the Rocky Mountains and buoyant enough to navigate denser ice. The dwarf planet also has four rapidly rotating small moons named Nix, Styx, Kerberos, and Hydra.
In 2006, the International Astronomical Union ruled that Pluto wasn’t really the ninth planet in our solar system. It is now considered a dwarf planet. But that doesn’t mean Pluto isn’t interesting, sometimes in the extreme. Data from the fly-by of NASA’s New Horizons mission headed into deep space reported that Pluto has some bizarre qualities, including the possibility of ice volcanoes, floating mountains and rapidly twirling moons. Perhaps the strangest of the discoveries is the idea that Pluto has hills and small mountains made of ice that ripple in a huge glacial sea of nitrogen.
Strange World of a Dwarf Planet:
Pluto’s mountains are likely more like icebergs, scientists say, and are probably as big as the Rocky Mountains here on Earth. They are buoyant enough to navigate ice denser with nitrogen and carbon monoxide.
Near the western edge of a giant ice field known as Sputnik Planum, giant layers of water ice appear to have been fractured and rearranged, producing what NASA’s Jeff Moore has called “anarchic terrain.”
In addition to Pluto’s largest moon, Charon, the dwarf planet has four rapidly rotating small moons, named Nix, Styx, Kerberos, and Hydra. “At one point in the past, there were more than just four of Pluto’s moons, there were at least six,” NASA scientists said.
