Farrell says the work will be useful for missions to
other icy bodies too: «We don't want future geologists to look at their radar data and say no reflectance means no aquifer.»
Poor Pluto is crowded by thousands
of other icy bodies in the outer solar system, some bigger than Pluto itself, so it fails the test.
But much farther away, in regions long presumed to be the realm of comets and
other icy bodies, there could be billions of rocky orbs circling the sun, a new study suggests.
«Although toxic to us, carbon monoxide is one of many gases found in comets and
other icy bodies,» Aki Roberge, an astrophysicist at NASA, said in a statement.
As this solar system continues to evolve, astronomers speculate, it's likely that the organic molecules safely locked away in comets and
other icy bodies will be ferried to environments that would be more nurturing for life.