From Newsgroup: sci.space.news


http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20160324

Pluto: On Frozen Pond
March 24, 2016

[Image]
Image credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest
Research Institute

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft spied several features on Pluto that offer evidence of a time millions or billions of years ago when -- thanks to
much higher pressure in Pluto's atmosphere and warmer conditions on the surface -- liquids might have flowed across and pooled on the surface
of the distant world.

"In addition to this possible former lake, we also see evidence of channels that may also have carried liquids in Pluto's past," said Alan Stern, Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado---principal investigator
of New Horizons and lead author of a scientific paper on the topic submitted to the journal Icarus.

This feature appears to be a frozen, former lake of liquid nitrogen, located in a mountain range just north of Pluto's informally named Sputnik Planum. Captured by the New Horizons' Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI)
as the spacecraft flew past Pluto on July 14, 2015, the image shows details
as small as about 430 feet (130 meters). At its widest point the possible
lake appears to be about 20 miles (30 kilometers) across.

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