New map of Pluto reveals ‘whale’ and ‘doughnut’ formations

NASA revealed a new map of Pluto on Tuesday, using images gathered by its New Horizons spacecraft, which is scheduled to make a close flyby of the dwarf planet later this month. The new map shows mysterious “whale” and “doughnut” formations, intriguing researchers and amateur space watchers alike.

New Horizons has been traveling through the solar system’s unexplored outer reaches for the last 9 1/2 years and will come within 7,750 miles of Pluto on July 14. No spacecraft has come closer to the planet, which orbits the sun at an average distance of 3.7 billion miles.

The new map of Pluto shows an elongated dark area that scientists have informally dubbed the "whale," which is nearly 1,900 miles long, as well as a bright region to the east of the whale that scientists say may be coated with fresh deposits of frost.

To the west, near the whale’s tail, is a bright, doughnut-shaped spot that scientists say resembles an impact crater or a volcano, but they are unable to determine exactly what it is until they see more detailed images.

“We’re at the ‘man in the moon’ stage of viewing Pluto,” John Spencer, the deputy leader of the geology, geophysics and imaging team at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, said Tuesday in a press release. “It’s easy to imagine you’re seeing familiar shapes in this bizarre collection of light and dark features. However, it’s too early to know what these features really are.”

The new map uses images taken from June 27 to July 3 using an instrument called the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager, combined with lower-resolution color data from New Horizon’s Ralph instrument.

A computer overload prompted the spacecraft to partially shut down on July 4, after a relatively quiet journey of 3 billion miles and nearly 10 years. With just days to go before the flyby and tensions high, flight controllers managed to regain contact with the spacecraft in a little over an hour and correct the situation.

About 2 1/2 days’ worth of observations were lost because of the problem — or about 30 observations out of 500 planned over the next week.

Principal scientist Alan Stern said it was more important to recover the spacecraft than worry about some lost observations of the dwarf planet, still several million miles away.

“While we prefer that this event hadn’t occurred ... this is a speed bump in terms of the total return that we expect from this flyby,” said Stern, who is also with the Southwest Research Institute. Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, already are surprising scientists with their surface appearances, “and we’re excited to get back to that.”

He and others involved in the mission said they do not expect the problem to recur. The main computer was multitasking in preparation for the big event — and dealing with heavier, more complex data loads than expected — when the trouble arose. The spacecraft went into its safe mode, and science operations ceased. Contact was restored through its backup computer.

No changes were made to the flyby plan because of the problem, according to officials.

New Horizons — about the size of a baby grand piano — was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, in 2006. It was designed and built by Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, which is managing the $700 million mission for NASA and where the New Horizons flight control team is based.

Al Jazeera and The Associated Press