Pluto's Far Side
Abstract
The New Horizons spacecraft provided near-global observations of Pluto that far exceed the resolution of Earth-based datasets. However, most previous Pluto New Horizons analyses focused on the New Horizons encounter hemisphere (i.e., the anti-Charon hemisphere containing Sputnik Planitia). In this work, we summarize and interpret data on Pluto's "far side" (i.e., its non-encounter or alternatively, its sub-Charon hemisphere), providing the first integrated New Horizons overview of Pluto's far side terrains. We find strong evidence for widespread bladed (i.e., aligned CH₄-mountain) deposits, evidence for an impact crater about as large as any on the "near side" hemisphere, evidence for complex lineations approximately antipodal to Sputnik Planitia that may be causally related, evidence that the far side maculae (i.e., equatorial dark regions) are smaller and more structured than Pluto's encounter hemisphere maculae, and more.
Additional Information
© 2020 Elsevier Inc. Received 16 October 2019, Revised 27 March 2020, Accepted 31 March 2020, Available online 14 April 2020. This work was supported, except as otherwise noted, by NASA's New Horizons mission. PJM was supported by NASA's New Frontiers Data Analysis Program grant 80NSSC18K1317, from which OLW also received partial support. We acknowledge helpful comments from our colleague Tanguy Bertrand, referee Geoff Collins, and another (anonymous) referee. This paper is dedicated to the future spacecraft exploration of Pluto's fascinating far side. The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 102722
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20200422-150741164
- NASA
- 80NSSC18K1317
- Created
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2020-04-22Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-16Created from EPrint's last_modified field