Get your Pluto trivia down cold
Palooza of papers recap data collected from New Horizons flyby
BANDS OF BLUE Blue skies and an onionlike layering of hazes envelop Pluto, as seen in this parting image from the New Horizons spacecraft.
NASA, JHUAPL, SWRI
It has been eight months since the New Horizons spacecraft flew past Pluto (SN Online: 7/15/15), but the discoveries keep trickling in. Mission scientists have now recapped the latest findings in five papers published online March 17 in Science. Science News has previously reported on many of these findings, but to mark those months of discovery, here are nine newsy nuggets about our favorite dwarf planet:
1. Ice is king. Frozen nitrogen, methane and carbon monoxide blanket the landscape and help shape mountains, plains and a cornucopia of alien landforms (SN: 8/8/15, p. 6). Frozen water, in fact, is what passes for bedrock
