“NEW YORK (AP) – New insights into the surface of Charon, Pluto’s largest moon, have been discovered by NASA’s Webb Space Telescope.
The first-ever detection of carbon dioxide and hydrogen peroxide on Charon’s surface, which is approximately half the size of Pluto, has been recorded.
In 2015, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft conducted a flyby that revealed the moon’s surface is covered in water ice. However, certain chemicals at specific infrared wavelengths went undetected until the Webb telescope stepped in. “This fills in a lot of gaps for chemicals we wouldn’t have otherwise been able to detect,” said Carly Howett, a scientist from New Horizons unassociated with the recent study.
This research was published on Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications.
Situated in the remote fringes of our solar system within the Kuiper Belt, Pluto along with its moons, including Charon, are dwarf planets over 3 billion miles (or 4.83 billion kilometers) from the sun. Conditions are likely too cold to sustain life. In addition to water ice, detections of ammonia and organic materials on Charon have been previously recorded.
Silvia Protopapa from the Southwest Research Institute, a co-author of the study, suggests that radiation interacting with water molecules on Charon’s surface may have given rise to the hydrogen peroxide. Meanwhile, surface impacts could cause the release of carbon dioxide.
This latest discovery holds potential for painting a clearer picture of Charon’s formation and could also assist scientists in unraveling the compositions of other distant moons and planets.”
