Washington : Pluto’s largest moon, Charon, once had a sub-surface ocean that has long since frozen and expanded – pushing outward and causing the moon’s surface to stretch and fracture on a massive scale, new images from NASA’s New Horizons mission have revealed, reports IANS.
Charon is characterised by a system of “pull apart” tectonic faults, which are expressed as ridges, scarps and valleys – the latter sometimes reaching more than 6 km deep. Charon’s tectonic landscape shows that, the moon expanded in its past and Charon’s surface fractured as it stretched.”The outer layer of Charon is primarily water ice. This layer was kept warm when Charon was young by heat provided by the decay of radioactive elements, as well as Charon’s own internal heat of formation,” the US space agency said in a statement. Scientists say Charon could have been warm enough to cause the water ice to melt deep down, creating a subsurface ocean.
But as Charon cooled over time, this ocean would have frozen and expanded – lifting the outermost layers of the moon and producing the massive chasms we see today.
