What would it be like to stand on Pluto?

Did you know that Pluto has a heart?… Like this one below

Recording the discovery Nasa on it’s website wrote “Three billion miles away, Pluto has sent a “love note” back to Earth”. Amazing.

Source : New Horizons Spacecraft Displays Pluto’s Big Heart

Now all we know about surface of Pluto mostly comes from either these images captured by New Horizons spacecraft or from mathematical simulations made earlier. And these images might be our best source of info for next half a century or so, because last time we sent a spacecraft towards Pluto, it was still a planet and now it’s just one of a new less important category called dwarf planets. Imagine convincing taxpayers to pay for sending a probe to a rock in outer reaches of solar system.

Now surface of Pluto contains many interesting features which are extreme and bizarre compared to features here on earth. Here are few discoveries from New Horizons that will give an idea what would it like be standing on surface of Pluto.

1 ) Instead of polar snow caps made of water Pluto has methane snow caps and freezing point of methane is -182°C (-295.6°F). If you thought weather here on our poles was extreme.

Source: [Pluto’s Methane Snowcaps on the Edge of Darkness}(https://www.nasa.gov/feature/pluto-s-methane-snowcaps-on-the-edge-of-darkness/)

2 ) Pluto had lakes and rivers of liquid nitrogen once upon a time. Now they are just frozen. There was once sufficient amount of atmosphere to create enough pressure for nitrogen to exist in liquid state.

Source : Pluto may have hosted lakes and rivers of liquid nitrogen

3 ) Surface of Pluto has icy mountains made up of water ice. But at Pluto's temperatures water ice starts behaving like a rock not a fragile material which can break under small force.

These mountains are thought to have formed just a 100 million years ago, which is minuscule in geological time frames. This discovery proves that Pluto is still geologically active.

Source : The Icy Mountains of Pluto

4 ) Instead of grains of sand Pluto’s surface has grains of solid methane, which gives it’s surface a snake’s skin like texture.

Source : Pluto’s ‘Snakeskin’ Terrain: Cradle of the Solar System?

5 ) Pluto has water and might have liquid water oceans under it’s surface.

So, remember to take a submarine with you.

Source : Pluto Might Have a Massive Ocean Hiding Under its Surface

6 ) Pluto has atmosphere. Not of the air we can breathe in though.

The thin blue line is visible if pluto is looked at from behind when sun is in front. Earth also has atmosphere this thin in proportion to it's size.

Source: Pluto's Blue Sky

7 ) Pluto has volcanoes that erupt ice instead of lava.

Source : Possible Ice Volcano on Pluto Has the ‘Wright Stuff’

8 ) And based on above findings, an artist rendering of what it would be like on surface of Pluto.

Pluto is 120 degrees tilted on it’s axis, so for half it’s revolution around sun it’s day and for other half revolution it’s night. So if you go and settle on Pluto today and then your grand kids would need to relocate to brighter side once every 128 years. Remember that to teach to your grand kids. You’d not want them to be deficient of Vitamin D. Would you?

P.S. This is my first blog post here, please do suggest improvements if any, I want to learn to write better.