A new paper by PSI Senior Scientist Candy Hansen offers new insights on Pluto’s atmospheric pressure. New Hubble Space Telescope images and other observations have allowed Hansen and her co-authors to model Pluto’s climate with much greater accuracy. Previously people thought that as Pluto moved away from the Sun that its nitrogen-based atmosphere would completely freeze out. Hansen’s Icarus paper “Pluto’s climate modeled with new observational constraints” suggests that this will not happen prior to the arrival of NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, though the southern polar cap of frozen nitrogen will expand. New Horizons is scheduled to make its closest pass-by of Pluto in July 2015.
Above, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft will offer new insights on Pluto when it passes by the planet in July 2015.
Below, eccentricity of Pluto’s orbit and Pluto’s obliquity have a profound effect on atmospheric pressure and the distribution of volatiles on the surface.
