Uploaded July 2015 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
What’s cool about Pluto? Get a quick peek at the latest science in this daily update from NASA’s New Horizons mission, on track for a flight past Pluto on July 14, 2015.
There’s methane on Pluto! Just no cows. This is Pluto in a minute.
Methane is a fairly common gas on the Earth but most of the methane on our planet is biologically produced. So it might make sense that when you think of methane on another planet in the solar system you think that it would be biologically produced. However, there are other, non-biological ways to make methane. And when we talk about methane on Pluto we’re talking about primordial methane.
Two of the most common elements in our solar system are carbon and hydrogen, and given how prevalent these gases are it’s unsurprising that we would see a lot of natural methane in the solar system.
The presence of methane on Pluto is neither new or a surprise. It was first discovered in 1976 using ground-based telescopes, but the New Horizons mission is the first to actually see this methane and find evidence of it up close.
The MVIC Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera and the LEISA infrared spectral imager in the New Horizons Ralph instrument are both able to look for signatures of methane, though for now only LEISA has found evidence of methane on Pluto’s surface, which means it’s working well coming up on the close flyby.
For the moment, the New Horizons team doesn’t know exactly how much methane is on Pluto or how it’s distributed, but this is something they will be looking for in future data.
For more on the day’s news from Pluto be sure to check out the New Horizons website, and be sure to come back here tomorrow for more Pluto in a Minute.
To learn more about the mission visit:
nasa.gov/newhorizons
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu
What’s cool about Pluto? Get a quick peek at the latest science in this daily update from NASA’s New Horizons mission, on track for a flight past Pluto on July 14, 2015.
There’s methane on Pluto! Just no cows. This is Pluto in a minute.
Methane is a fairly common gas on the Earth but most of the methane on our planet is biologically produced. So it might make sense that when you think of methane on another planet in the solar system you think that it would be biologically produced. However, there are other, non-biological ways to make methane. And when we talk about methane on Pluto we’re talking about primordial methane.
Two of the most common elements in our solar system are carbon and hydrogen, and given how prevalent these gases are it’s unsurprising that we would see a lot of natural methane in the solar system.
The presence of methane on Pluto is neither new or a surprise. It was first discovered in 1976 using ground-based telescopes, but the New Horizons mission is the first to actually see this methane and find evidence of it up close.
The MVIC Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera and the LEISA infrared spectral imager in the New Horizons Ralph instrument are both able to look for signatures of methane, though for now only LEISA has found evidence of methane on Pluto’s surface, which means it’s working well coming up on the close flyby.
For the moment, the New Horizons team doesn’t know exactly how much methane is on Pluto or how it’s distributed, but this is something they will be looking for in future data.
For more on the day’s news from Pluto be sure to check out the New Horizons website, and be sure to come back here tomorrow for more Pluto in a Minute.
To learn more about the mission visit:
nasa.gov/newhorizons
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu
