The Pluto System After New Horizons

Abstract

The discovery of Pluto in 1930 presaged the discoveries of both the Kuiper Belt and ice dwarf planets, which are the third class of planets in our solar system. From the 1970s to the 19990s numerous fascinating attributes of the Pluto system were discovered, including multiple surface volatile species, Pluto's large satellite Charon, and its atmosphere. These attributes, and the 1990s discovery of the Kuiper Belt and Pluto's cohort of small Kuiper Belt planets, motivated the exploration of Pluto. That mission, called New Horizons (NH), revolutionized knowledge of Pluto and its system of satellites in 2015. Beyond providing rich geological, compositional, and atmospheric data sets, New Horizons demonstrated that Pluto itself has been surprisingly geologically active throughout the past 4 billion years, and that the planet exhibits a surprisingly complex range of atmospheric phenomenology and geologic expression that rival Mars in their richness.

References in corpus (27)

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• "TNOs are Cool": A survey of the trans-Neptunian region VI. Herschel/PACS observations and thermal modeling of 19 classical Kuiper belt objects
• Haze in Pluto's Atmosphere
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• New Horizons: Anticipated Scientific Investigations at the Pluto System
• Masses of Nix and Hydra
• Visible spectroscopy of 2003 UB313: Evidence for N2 ice on the surface of the largest TNO?
• Pluto's Haze as a Surface Material
• Formation of Charon's Red Poles From Seasonally Cold-Trapped Volatiles
• 3D modeling of organic haze in Pluto's atmosphere
• The orbital distribution of trans-Neptunian objects beyond 50 au
• Penitentes as the origin of the bladed terrain of Tartarus Dorsa, Pluto
• Overview of the New Horizons Science Payload
• New Horizons Constraints on Charon's Present Day Atmosphere
• The Ratio of Retrograde to Prograde Orbits: A Test for Kuiper Belt Binary Formation Theories
• On the Origin of Pluto's Small Satellites by Resonant Transport
• The New Horizons and Hubble Space Telescope Search For Rings, Dust, and Debris in the Pluto-Charon System
• Evidence for Possible Clouds in Pluto's Present Day Atmosphere
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Cited by in corpus (28)

• Initial results from the New Horizons exploration of 2014 MU69, a small Kuiper Belt Object
• Jupiter's composition suggests its core assembled exterior to the N2 snowline
• The solar nebula origin of (486958) Arrokoth, a primordial contact binary in the Kuiper belt
• Trans-Neptunian objects and Centaurs at thermal wavelengths
• Large-scale cryovolcanic resurfacing on Pluto
• Primordial N2 provides a cosmochemical explanation for the existence of Sputnik Planitia, Pluto
• Tidal Dissipation in Dual-Body, Highly Eccentric, and Non-synchronously Rotating Systems: Applications to Pluto-Charon and the Exoplanet TRAPPIST-1e
• Stellar occultations by Trans-Neptunian Objects
• The Wide-Binary Origin of The Pluto-Charon System
• Great Expectations: Plans and Predictions for New Horizons Encounter with Kuiper Belt Object 2014 MU69 ('Ultima Thule')
• A Pluto-Charon Sonata: The Dynamical Architecture of the Circumbinary Satellite System
• A Pluto--Charon Sonata: Dynamical Limits on the Masses of the Small Satellites
• A Pluto-Charon Concerto: An Impact on Charon as the Origin of the Small Satellites
• The Contribution of Dwarf Planets to the Origin of Jupiter Family Comets
• Pluto near the edge of chaos
• A Pluto--Charon Concerto II. Formation of a Circumbinary Disk of Debris After the Giant Impact
• The Albedos, Sizes, Colors and Satellites of Dwarf Planets Compared with Newly Measured Dwarf Planet 2013 FY27
• A Pluto-Charon Sonata III. Growth of Charon from a Circum-Pluto Ring of Debris
• Tidal evolution of the Pluto-Charon binary
• Chasing Nomadic Worlds: A New Class of Deep Space Missions
• The influence of Equation of State on impact dynamics between Pluto-like bodies
• One of Everything: The Breakthrough Listen Exotica Catalog
• Approximating Annual Mean Incoming Solar Radiation
• Pluto's atmosphere observations with ALMA: spatially-resolved maps of CO and HCN emission and first detection of HNC
• The Tidal-Thermal Evolution of the Pluto-Charon System
• Synchronisation of a tidal binary by inward orbital migration. The case of Pluto and Charon
• New Investigations of Dark Floored Pits in the Volatile Ice of Sputnik Planitia on Pluto
• The Cohesive Object Sequence: The Mass-Density Distribution of Astronomical Objects from Asteroids to Stars