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Space

Ice-spewing supervolcano may have been found on Pluto

Images of Pluto from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft show a 44-kilometre-wide crater with hints of recent volcanic activity

By Alex Wilkins

25 October 2023

A photo of Pluto taken by NASA’s New Horizons mission

NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

A supervolcano on Pluto as large as the one in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, may have erupted and spewed ice over the dwarf planet’s surface just a few million years ago, according to an analysis of a crater found by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft.

Ice volcanoes on Pluto were first identified in images taken by New Horizons when it reached the object in 2015. Scientists think these volcanoes eject lumps of frozen water, instead of pumping out lava…

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