A recent paper suggests that Pluto may be compositionally similar to comet 67P, and so have been formed from about one billion similar comets. The paper, by authors at the Southwest Research Institute in the USA, combines data from ESA’s Rosetta mission with data from NASA’s New Horizons mission. In particular, the authors found that nitrogen concentrations were similar for a region on Pluto and for comet 67P. A press release summarises the findings of the paper “Primordial N2 provides a cosmochemical explanation for the existence of Sputnik Planitia, Pluto” published in the journal Icarus (no open access).
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