--- title: NASA's Pluto AMA On Reddit: The 3 Coolest Things We Learned description: "If there was snow, it would be quite frictiony, like skiing on sand, because it is sooooo cold there." canonical: https://time.com/3957879/pluto-ama-reddit/ author: Katy Osborn article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-07-14T21:27:11.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T07:22:08.166Z article:section: Science og:title: The 3 Coolest Things We Learned From NASA's Pluto AMA On Reddit og:description: There might be snow on the dwarf planet og:url: https://time.com/3957879/pluto-ama-reddit/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta98c538ef61073c3/69885ade2dce0150459e49f6/pluto-ama-reddit.jpeg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1024 og:image:height: 576 og:image:alt: Pluto-AMA-Reddit og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The 3 Coolest Things We Learned From NASA's Pluto AMA On Reddit twitter:description: There might be snow on the dwarf planet twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta98c538ef61073c3/69885ade2dce0150459e49f6/pluto-ama-reddit.jpeg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # The 3 Coolest Things We Learned From NASA's Pluto AMA On Reddit > Sponsored content. 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It reaches 40,000 subscribers with a 34.2% open rate and a 2.1% click rate as of August 2026. #### Where can I follow the energy transition as a business story? Future Proof covers climate and energy as an economic and business story rather than only an environmental one. It publishes every Friday and is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Who writes Future Proof? Justin Worland, a senior correspondent at TIME and an award-winning climate journalist, writes Future Proof. #### Is Future Proof free? Yes. Future Proof is free at time.com/newsletters. by [Katy Osborn](https://time.com/author/katy-osborn/) ## Katy Osborn Jul 14, 2015 9:27 PM UTC  Pluto nearly fills the frame in this image from the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) aboard NASA's New Horizons spacecraft, taken on July 13, 2015, when the spacecraft was 476,000 miles from the surface. Pluto nearly fills the frame in this image from the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) aboard NASA's New Horizons spacecraft, taken on July 13, 2015, when the spacecraft was 476,000 miles from the surface.NASA—Getty Images by [Katy Osborn](https://time.com/author/katy-osborn/) ## Katy Osborn Jul 14, 2015 9:27 PM UTC The New Horizons spacecraft’s close encounter with Pluto has already yielded some pretty remarkable new info on the dwarf planet, including its actual [size](http://time.com/3957602/pluto-earth-graphic/) and [what its surface looks like](http://time.com/3957640/new-horizons-pluto-images/). And on Tuesday, members of NASA’s New Horizons Science Team took to Reddit to answer questions about the mission in an “Ask Me Anything” [thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3d9luh/were%5Fscientists%5Fon%5Fthe%5Fnasa%5Fnew%5Fhorizons%5Fteam/). Here are three things we learned from the Q&A: **There might be snow on Pluto! But leave the skis at home** Team leader Alan Stern suggested earlier Tuesday that the dwarf-planet showed signs of snow. But Kelsi Singer, a post-doc on the New Horizons Science Team, gave Redditors the real scoop: “If there was snow, it would be quite frictiony, like skiing on sand, because it is sooooo cold there,” Singer wrote. “It would not be like the snow on Earth, which is actually quite balmy compared to Pluto.” Singer’s post had some Redditors [reimagining their ski vacations.](http://i.imgur.com/oHzKSHv.png) **Pluto has a more youthful complexion than its moon Charon** Images sent back to earth on Tuesday of Pluto’s Texas-sized moon, Charon, revealed a “[system of chasms](https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/charon-s-newly-discovered-system-of-chasms)” that NASA claimed is “larger than the grand canyon.” Pluto’s geological features, meanwhile, appear to be much newer. Why the starkly different surfaces? Stuart Robbins, a research scientist with the NASA team, replied that the two most likely reasons had to do with Pluto’s size and atmosphere. “Pluto is larger than Charon,” Robbins wrote, “so it can retain more heat and have active geology longer.” The other? “Pluto has a tenuous atmosphere, and during the 248-year orbit around the sun, the atmosphere sublimates from one area in sun and is deposited in another in darkness, and then this reverses half-way through the orbit,” Robbins explained. “This process is very slow, relatively speaking, but so is cratering.” **Getting the spacecraft’s data back to Earth is no easy task** It takes about 4.5 hours for light to travel from Pluto back to the Earth, and according to Robbins, that means a lag in getting data back from the space probe. “It takes over an hour for an image to be played back because of the very slow speeds over such a long distance,” Robbins wrote. But that’s nothing compared to total download time for all the data collected during the close encounter—Robbins said it should all be downloaded in about 16 months. Read the full AMA [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3d9luh/were%5Fscientists%5Fon%5Fthe%5Fnasa%5Fnew%5Fhorizons%5Fteam/). _Read next:_ [_9 Facts About Pluto You Need to Know_](http://time.com/3957053/pluto-facts/?iid=time%5Freadnext) [_Listen to the most important stories of the day_](http://time.com/newsletter/the-brief/autoplay/?xid=spl-fullbrief-article) ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3957879/pluto-ama-reddit/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3957879/pluto-ama-reddit/"},"headline":"The 3 Coolest Things We Learned From NASA's Pluto AMA On Reddit","datePublished":"2015-07-14T21:27:11.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T07:22:08.166Z","description":"\"If there was snow, it would be quite frictiony, like skiing on sand, because it is sooooo cold there.\"","url":"https://time.com/3957879/pluto-ama-reddit/","keywords":["Newsfeed","Space"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta98c538ef61073c3/69885ade2dce0150459e49f6/pluto-ama-reddit.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Katy Osborn","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/katy-osborn/"}],"articleSection":"Science","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta98c538ef61073c3/69885ade2dce0150459e49f6/pluto-ama-reddit.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Pluto-AMA-Reddit","caption":"Pluto-AMA-Reddit","creditText":"NASA—Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/science/","name":"Science"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3957879/pluto-ama-reddit/","name":"The 3 Coolest Things We Learned From NASA's Pluto AMA On Reddit"}}]}] ```