New Horizons captures images of water ice and blue skies on Pluto.
(https://s.yimg.com/nn/fp/rsz/100915/images/smush/pluto_635x250_1444366061.jpg)
I find it hard to believe that they may have found evidence of water on Pluto ?
There was even rumors going around suggesting that may have been going to release a statement that they may have discovered Alien Life on it !
Are NASA About To Announce There Are Aliens On Pluto?
http://www.neekly.com/are-nasa-about-to-announce-there-are-aliens-on-pluto/?utm_source=outbrain_UK&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=outbrain_UK&utm_content=%7Bthumbnail%7D&utm_term=5291551
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Images of Pluto taken by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft show the dwarf planet has blue "hazes" and water ice, the agency said in a statement released today.
As NASA explains, the blue sky is formed by the way "haze particles" scatter blue light, although the particles themselves are probably gray or red. The particles responsible for the color are "soot-like particles we call tholins," the agency writes.
Also shown in the images were exposed regions of water ice. "Large expanses of Pluto don't show exposed water ice, because it's apparently masked by other, more volatile ices across most of the planet," Southwest Research Institute science team member Jason Cook said in the statement. "Understanding why water appears exactly where it does, and not in other places, is a challenge that we are digging into."
http://www.theverge.com/2015/10/8/9480591/nasa-new-horizons-water-ice-blue-sky-pluto
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Pluto has blue skies and patches of frozen water, according to the latest data out Thursday from NASA's unmanned New Horizons probe, which made a historic flyby of the dwarf planet in July.
Never before has Pluto -- a resident of the distant Kuiper Belt, a frigid region of the solar system beyond Neptune that is home to many comets and asteroids -- been observed in such detail.
"Who would have expected a blue sky in the Kuiper Belt? It's gorgeous," said Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator from Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado.
Along with the announcement, NASA released an image showing a blue layer of haze around Pluto, taken by the New Horizons spacecraft's camera.
Blue skies are seen on Earth because of the scattering of sunlight by very small particles of nitrogen.
"On Pluto they appear to be larger -- but still relatively small -- soot-like particles we call tholins," said science team researcher Carly Howett, also of SwRI.
NASA said the "second significant finding" from New Horizons' latest trove of data is that there are numerous small, exposed regions of frozen water on Pluto.
Using a tool called a spectral composition mapper on New Horizons, scientists have been able to map the signatures of water ice on various parts of the planet's surface.
"Large expanses of Pluto don't show exposed water ice," said science team member Jason Cook of SwRI. "Because it's apparently masked by other, more volatile ices across most of the planet."
"Understanding why water appears exactly where it does, and not in other places, is a challenge that we are digging into."
The areas that seem to contain the most water ice also appear bright red in recent color images of Pluto.
"I'm surprised that this water ice is so red," said Silvia Protopapa, a science team member from the University of Maryland, College Park.
"We don't yet understand the relationship between water ice and the reddish tholin colorants on Pluto's surface."
Scientists have previously reported seeing flowing nitrogen ice glaciers on the surface of Pluto.
On July 14, New Horizons, a nuclear-powered spacecraft about the size of a baby grand piano, became the first spaceship to pass by Pluto. It will continue to send data back to Earth until late next year.
NASA says the spacecraft is pressing on and is in good working order some 3.1 billion miles (five billion kilometers) from Earth.
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https://uk.news.yahoo.com/blue-skies-water-ice-detected-pluto-193135390.html#tDR794A
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Not quite sure what to make of this !
There's Already Life on Mars, and We Put It There !
Last week, NASA announced the unravelling of a major Mars mystery. "Now we know there is liquid water on Mars"
"We know there's life on Mars already because we sent it there," John Grunsfeld, the associate administrator of the agency's Science Mission Directorate, said during a press conference on Monday. It is a Faustian condition of space exploration that we cannot search for life on alien planets without bringing along very small amounts of very small Earth life. This process is known as forward contamination, and minimizing, if not preventing, its occurrence is the responsibility of Cassie Conley, a plant biologist who has served as NASA's planetary-protection officer since 2006. "It's basic common sense," Conley told me. "We have to be careful not to blind ourselves with Earth life, the same way you can't see the stars when the sun is out."
http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/meet-the-martians