Category Archives: New Horizons mission

New Horizons mission, Pluto

Charon: WOW!!!

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Pluto’s Companion shows Evidence of Geologic Activity

Charon from New Horizons. July 11, 2015.
Charon from New Horizons. July 11, 2015.

So, what can I say!  Charon is not at all what I expected. Yes, sure, I know it’s an icy world, but this view just blew me away when I saw it earlier today. To paraphrase a famous Star Trek doctor: “It’s NOT dead, Jim!”

So, what do we have here? First, there’s what looks like the mother of all really obvious impact craters! You can’t miss it, but just in case, it’s that round donut shaped region near the bottom.

Then you have what look like chasms, over on the right limb. Project scientists say they’re deeper and bigger than the Grand Canyon!

And, there are hints of other canyons or cracks or something marring the icy surface. Finally, check out that polar cap. It’s dark. What’s THAT all about?

So, now we have this moon of already weird-looking Pluto looking pretty darned strange itself. It’s becoming obvious to scientists that it’s active, especially if you take into account the evidence of faulting and disruption of the surface. That doesn’t happen on a dead world. So, what’s going on? Again, I can’t answer, but I’m really hoping we’re going to hear more about all this when we convene at Johns Hopkins over the next couple of days to hear from the experts.

As I like to say: stay tuned!

charon, New Horizons mission, Pluto

An Oddly Alien-Looking Visage of Pluto

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Take a Long Last Look at THIS Side of Pluto!

The CHaron-facing side of Pluto is showing some incredibly diverse landscape features just two days from flyby! Courtesy NASA-JHUAPL-SWRI
The Charon-facing side of Pluto is showing some incredibly diverse landscape features just two days from flyby! Courtesy NASA-JHUAPL-SWRI

Wow.  I got off the plane today heading to Pluto Central and was greeted with tweets and retweets of the latest image of Pluto from New Horizons. And, what a weird place it’s showing us.  It reminded me of an alien Plutonian Cthulu, or maybe even a frozen Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Polygons and dark regions, circular landscape features — all on the Charon-facing side of Pluto. And, doesn’t THAT beg a lot of questions about why it looks like that!  We talked about it over dinner tonight, speculating about the processes that are causing the surface features and asking ourselves, “Does Charon have anything to do with the way Pluto looks? And, if so, what’s happening?”

I suspect we’ll hear more in the next couple of days about what those processes might be and how they’d work. So, I won’t speculate about that. But, I will say that this world is just delivering more and better surprises each day.  Just to give you an idea, the large dark areas you see on this image about 480 kilometers wide (about 300 miles), and they appear to be much more are more complex than could be make out in earlier images.

The mission scientists are, of course, eagerly dissecting the images, especially looking at the regularly space dark and light spots along the equator, plus the polygon-shaped regions above the equatorial belt. And, they’re asking a lot of questions of their own. Are there plateaus on the surface? Plains? Or, could Pluto be a ball with weird bright and dark variations on an otherwise smooth surface?  Do the circular regions imply impact craters?

I’m not sure all those questions will get answered right away, but they will -— eventually. In the meantime, the mission continues and flyby is just around the corner. Stay tuned!