New Constraints on Pluto's Sputnik Planitia Ice Sheet from a Coupled Reorientation-Climate Model ...

• Main Author: Keane, James
• Format: Dataset
• Language: unknown
• Published: Root 2023
• Subjects: Ice Sheet
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.48577/jpl.xfryni; https://dataverse.jpl.nasa.gov/citation?persistentId=doi:10.48577/jpl.XFRYNI

We present a coupled reorientation and climate model, to understand how true polar wander (TPW) and atmospheric condensation worked together to create the Sputnik Planitia (SP) glacier and reorient it to its present-day location on Pluto. SP is located at 18◦N, 178◦E, very close to the anti-Charon point, and it has been previously shown that this location can be explained by TPW reorientation of an impact basin as it fills with N2 ice. We readdress that hypothesis while including a more accurate treatment of Pluto’s climate and orbital obliquity cycle. Our model again finds that TPW is a viable mechanism for the formation and present-day location of SP. We find that the initial impact basin could have been located north of the present-day location, at latitudes between 35◦N and 50◦N. The empty basin is constrained to be 2.5 – 3 km deep, with enough N2 available to form at most a 1 – 2 km glacier. Larger N2 inventories reorient too close to the anti-Charon point. After reaching the final location, the glacier ...