Unveiled Research Highlights Fresh Insights about Pluto and Its Moon Orbiters
New Horizons Unveils Secrets of Pluto's Moons
The Pluto system, once a mysterious and distant world, has been shedding light on its secrets since the historic flyby by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft in July 2015. Among the most intriguing discoveries are the four small moons of Pluto: Styx, Nix, Kerberos, and Hydra.
These moons, discovered between 2005 and 2012, exhibit unique characteristics. The diameters of these celestial bodies range from about 25 miles (40 kilometers) for Nix and Hydra to about six miles (10 kilometers) for Styx and Kerberos. Their icy surfaces, distinctly different from those of Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, have brightness levels that set them apart.
The surfaces of these moons date back at least 4 billion years, according to scientific studies led by Alan Stern, principal investigator of the mission, and Hal Weaver, New Horizons project scientist, who is the lead author of the Science paper on Pluto's small moons.
New Horizons' seven science instruments collected about 50 gigabits of data on the spacecraft's digital recorders, most of it coming over nine busy days surrounding the encounter. Among the findings was evidence that some of the moons resulted from mergers of even smaller bodies.
The moons' rotation rates and pole orientations are highly anomalous and uniformly unusual, adding to their enigma. Approximately 20 haze layers are seen in the image, extending horizontally over hundreds of kilometers, but not strictly parallel to the surface.
One of the most striking discoveries was the haze layer about 3 miles (5 kilometers) above the surface, noted in the lower left area of the image. This finding reinforces the hypothesis that the small moons formed in the aftermath of a collision that produced the Pluto-Charon binary system.
Pluto's atmosphere contains layered hazes and is both cooler and more compact than expected. Methane, rather than nitrogen, is Pluto's primary escaping gas. The Sputnik Planum strip on Pluto, as seen by New Horizons, measures 228 miles (367 kilometers) long, while the Vulcan Planum strip on Charon spans 194 miles (312 kilometers).
New Horizons scientists have authored the first comprehensive set of papers describing results from last summer's Pluto system flyby. These papers, published in the journal Science, mark a significant step forward in our understanding of this distant world and its moons.
As Curt Niebur, New Horizons program scientist at NASA Headquarters, stated, "This is why we explore." Indeed, the exploration continues as we await the transmission of the remaining half of the flyby data, expected by the end of 2016. The Pluto system, once a mere dot in the distance, is now a rich source of knowledge and a testament to the power of exploration.
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