Researchers at Southwest Research Institute have announced findings based on NASA’s New Horizons observations indicating that liquid nitrogen may be moving through subsurface cracks and reaching the surface of Pluto near the northern edge of Sputnik Planitia, a massive glacier composed primarily of frozen nitrogen. The discovery represents the first evidence of liquid having flowed on Pluto’s surface during relatively recent geological time periods. Lead researcher Dr. Alan Stern, the mission’s principal investigator, noted that the findings demonstrate Pluto’s capacity to continue producing unexpected discoveries and suggest previously unknown types of time-variable geological features on the dwarf planet.
Sputnik Planitia, which covers an area larger than Texas and Oklahoma combined, displays peculiar features visible in New Horizons imagery collected during 2015 and 2016. The glacier’s northern region contains city-sized convection cells separated by thin dark lines and broader diffuse dark patches. Analysis suggests these markings may occasionally become temporarily moistened by liquid nitrogen rising from beneath the surface. The research team identified similarities between these dark patterns and features observed on terrestrial glaciers following exposure to liquid water, drawing particular comparisons with NASA Landsat 9 images of Earth’s ice sheets, including Greenland’s.
Computer modeling conducted by researchers at the SETI Institute provides a plausible mechanism for this process. The simulations indicate that nitrogen ice located at Sputnik Planitia’s base, which extends several kilometers deep, can melt to produce liquid nitrogen. This liquid could then ascend through narrow channels toward the surface, potentially propelled by buoyancy or pressure from below. Once reaching the surface, the liquid nitrogen could remain sufficiently fluid to travel downslope across the glacier while wetting surrounding nitrogen ice and creating the observed dark markings.
The research team estimates that Sputnik Planitia’s surface formed within the last million years based on surface overturn modeling, meaning any observed features must have developed during that timeframe. While similar basal liquid flow processes have not yet been clearly identified elsewhere on Pluto, more than half of the dwarf planet remains unmapped at high resolution. The same mechanism potentially operates on other bodies in the solar system, including Neptune’s moon Triton, where Voyager 2 spacecraft detected geysering activity. The findings appear in the peer-reviewed Planetary Science Journal and underscore the need for additional high-resolution observations of Pluto and other Kuiper Belt objects.
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