Another day, another set of extraordinary images from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft.
At a news conference this afternoon, the New Horizons team revealed a detailed, high-resolution image of Pluto's largest moon, Charon, to match the image of the dwarf planet itself released yesterday, as well as a decidedly lower-resolution but just as important image of Pluto's smaller and elongated satellite, Hydra.
From there, they moved to the surface of Pluto, revealing a closer look at a portion of the heart-shaped feature on Pluto, which they've now started calling the "Tombaugh Regio," named after Clyde Tombaugh, Pluto's discoverer.
Notably, that image revealed an absence of any impact craters, suggesting that it is a very "young" surface of less than 100 million years, complete with a range of icy mountains as high as 11,000 feet.
As NASA explains on its website, "unlike the icy moons of giant planets, Pluto cannot be heated by gravitational interactions with a much larger planetary body," adding, "some other process must be generating the mountainous landscape."
The image of Charon, too, has revealed some surprising geography, including a swath of cliffs and troughs that suggest "widespread fracturing of Charon's crust, likely a result of internal processes," according to NASA, as well as a canyon estimated to be four to six miles deep in the upper right portion of the image. As with the image of Pluto's surface, there also appears to be a complete lack of craters on Charon.
New Horizons scientist Cathy Olkin noted as well that there are "different theories" about the distinct dark region at Charon's north pole, which they've taken to calling Mordor, and that they're "looking forward to getting spectroscopic data back."
That and more is expected in the coming days.
