A team of geologists led by Marco Emanuele Discenza analyzed images from the New Horizons flyby of Pluto in 2015 and identified six landslides on the dwarf planet's surface, marking the first time such features have been confirmed there. The landslides occur along the inner walls of three craters near Sputnik Planitia and traveled between 6 to 9 miles across crater floors, with debris aprons as large as 50 square kilometers. The discovery indicates that Pluto remains geologically active, despite its distance from the sun.
The landslides on Pluto are among the most mobile in the solar system, a result of the dwarf planet's low gravity and low-friction icy terrain. One slide in Coughlin crater dropped 1.4 miles and may have been triggered by a nearby impact, but the origins of the other five remain uncertain -- thermal stress from Pluto's orbital variations, which cause surface volatiles like nitrogen and methane to sublimate and condense cyclically, is a leading hypothesis. New Horizons' limited coverage during its 2015 encounter means additional landslides likely exist but cannot be confirmed without more detailed imagery. The findings appear in the journal Icarus.