--- title: Pluto's Frozen 'Lake' Appears in New NASA Photo description: Liquids might once have pooled on the surface of Pluto, a new photograph captured by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft shows canonical: https://time.com/4271345/nasa-photo-frozen-pond-pluto/ author: Katie Reilly article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-03-24T20:32:24.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-22T16:12:22.682Z article:section: Science og:title: See NASA's New Photo of a Frozen 'Lake' on Pluto og:description: It appears to be a frozen former lake of liquid nitrogen og:url: https://time.com/4271345/nasa-photo-frozen-pond-pluto/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt5dc632cb124cfe35/69888c77e20a87bb9ba90204/pluto-pond.jpg?branch=production&width=640&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: pluto-pond og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: See NASA's New Photo of a Frozen 'Lake' on Pluto twitter:description: It appears to be a frozen former lake of liquid nitrogen twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt5dc632cb124cfe35/69888c77e20a87bb9ba90204/pluto-pond.jpg?branch=production&width=640&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # See NASA's New Photo of a Frozen 'Lake' on Pluto  by [Katie Reilly](https://time.com/author/katie-reilly/)  ## Katie Reilly Mar 24, 2016 8:32 PM UTC  An image captured by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft appears to show a frozen, former lake of liquid nitrogen. An image captured by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft appears to show a frozen, former lake of liquid nitrogen.NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI  by [Katie Reilly](https://time.com/author/katie-reilly/)  ## Katie Reilly Mar 24, 2016 8:32 PM UTC Millions or billions of years ago, liquids might have pooled on the surface of Pluto, a new photograph captured by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft shows. The image, captured by the spacecraft on July 14 and published by NASA on Thursday, appears to show a frozen former lake of liquid nitrogen situated in a mountain range, NASA said in a [post about the photo](http://www.nasa.gov/feature/pluto-on-frozen-pond). The lake is as much as 20 miles wide at one point. “In addition to this possible former lake, we also see evidence of channels that may also have carried liquids in Pluto’s past,” said Alan Stern, principal investigator of New Horizons, in a [post published by NASA](http://www.nasa.gov/feature/pluto-on-frozen-pond). ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4271345/nasa-photo-frozen-pond-pluto/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4271345/nasa-photo-frozen-pond-pluto/"},"headline":"See NASA's New Photo of a Frozen 'Lake' on Pluto","datePublished":"2016-03-24T20:32:24.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-22T16:12:22.682Z","description":"It appears to be a frozen former lake of liquid nitrogen","url":"https://time.com/4271345/nasa-photo-frozen-pond-pluto/","keywords":["Space"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt5dc632cb124cfe35/69888c77e20a87bb9ba90204/pluto-pond.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Katie Reilly","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/katie-reilly/"}],"articleSection":"Science","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt5dc632cb124cfe35/69888c77e20a87bb9ba90204/pluto-pond.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"pluto-pond","caption":"An image captured by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft appears to show a frozen, former lake of liquid nitrogen.","creditText":"NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI","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":"/tag/space/","name":"Space"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4271345/nasa-photo-frozen-pond-pluto/","name":"See NASA's New Photo of a Frozen 'Lake' on Pluto"}}]}] ```