New Horizons Mission Finds 'Icy Spider' On Pluto

New close-up photos of Pluto showed that there are several fractures that looked like a giant spider. The feature, just northeast of Sputnik Planum, showed six extended fractures all meeting at a central point.

The longest fracture, called the Sleipnir Fossa, extends 360 miles long from north to south. The shortest one, meanwhile, extends horizontally for a length of 60 miles.

According to Space Flight Insider, Oliver White, who is part of the team for New Horizons said that the pattern does not look like anything that is seen on any world in the outer Solar System, although it does have some resemblance to features seen on Mercury and Venus.

The Messenger orbiter found troughs on Mercury in a region they called Pantheon Fossae, while radially-centered fractures called novae were seen by the Magellan spacecraft on Venus, both of which bear some resemblance the fractures found in Pluto.

Pluto has always been fascinating, but similar to the rest of its complicated features, the "spider" is a sign that the planet is geologically active, and mission scientists think the point of convergence is stress caused by material that is welling up to the surface.

A Pluto flyby headlined news last year, but because of the small planet's complexity and the fascination it held for people, questions have already been raised. There have been talks of the possibility of returning to the icy planet, but with an orbiter.

Alan Stern, principal investigator of the New Horizons mission said that NASA's new Space Launch System is already under development, and will be the most powerful rocket ever built with its iron propulsion technology, could propel a spacecraft to the planet as fast, or even faster than New Horizons. "We're ready to do that mission if the scientific community wants to do it," Stern said.