Frozen Mountains
NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI
One of the first features on Pluto to capture the attention of researchers is a region near the icy dwarf planet’s equator that shows young mountains rivaling the Colorado Rockies at 11,000 ft. Because the region does not indicate impact craters, scientists say it could be less than 100 million years old, may still be active and made primarily from water ice. Although methane and nitrogen ice cover much of the surface of Pluto, these materials are not strong enough to build the mountains. Instead, a stiffer material, most likely water-ice, created the peaks. “At Pluto’s temperatures, water-ice behaves more like rock,” says deputy geology and geophysics team lead Bill McKinnon of Washington University, St. Louis.
