Pluto’s dark side spills its secrets — including hints of a hidden ocean

Pluto’s dark side spills its secrets — including hints of a hidden ocean

Pluto’s dark side spills its secrets

When NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft zipped past Pluto in 2015, it was able to capture close-ups of only one side — the hemisphere that the Sun illuminated at the time. Now that scientists have scrutinized those ‘near-side’ images, they are beginning to analyse the dwarf planet’s ‘dark side’, which the spacecraft photographed days before it shot past. Hundreds of images are providing a new view of this active world — one that offers crucial insight into how it formed, whether there’s an ocean hiding beneath its icy crust and the complex ways that compounds freeze out of the atmosphere and sculpt its surface. “I expected Pluto to be a scientific wonderland, but it did not have to be so beautiful,” says planetary scientist Leslie Young.

Nature | 12 min read