How Pluto Formed Its Mysterious Dunes

When NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft zipped by Pluto at 31,000 mph in July 2015, it captured a plethora of breathtaking photos of the distant dwarf planet’s surface. Within these highly detailed images, researchers noticed what looked to be an extensive system of strange dunes stretching 75 miles along the boundary of Pluto’s massive Al-Idrisi Montes mountain range and Sputnik Planitia — a nitrogen-ice plain that forms the left lobe of the planet’s fam