Wright Mons Volcano in Pluto

In Context 

Pluto has giant ice volcano like Wright Mons that could hint at the possibility of life

• As per report which shows that icy lava flows have recently covered substantial tracts of its surface

About Wright Mons Volcano

• It was spotted on the surface of Pluto by the New Horizons spacecraft in July 2015.
• It was informally named by the New Horizons team in honour of the Wright brothers.
• It is about 150km across its base and has a central depression (a hole) 40-50km wide, with a floor at least as low as the surrounding terrain.
• It rises 4-5km above its surroundings. 
• Its volume exceeds 20 thousand cubic kilometres. 
  • It is  considerably less than the volume of Mars’s biggest volcanoes.
• The slopes of Wright Mons and much of its surroundings are seen to be crowded with hummocks up to 1km high and mostly 6-12km across.
  •  These hummocks are made primarily of water-ice, rather than nitrogen- or methane-ice that covers some other young regions on Pluto. 
  • The hummocks were likely created by some sort of ice volcanism, known by the technical term “cryovolcanism” — erupting icy water rather than molten rock. 

Other volcano 

• Piccard Mons : It is less well characterised than Wright Mons because, by the time New Horizons made its closest approach, Pluto’s rotation had carried Piccard Mons into darkness. 
• The flyby was so fast that only the side of Pluto facing the Sun at the right time could be seen in detail. 
• However, New Horizons was able to image Piccard Mons thanks to sunlight weakly reflected onto the ground by haze in Pluto’s atmosphere.

Source:DTE