Pluto’s largest moon Charon once had a subsurface ocean which has frozen long ago and expanded, pushing and stretching the natural satellite’s surface like ‘Hulk’ while causing massive fractures, a new NASA image has shown.
The new image from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft suggest that Charon’s tectonic landscape shows that, somehow, the moon expanded in its past, and — like the fictional superhero Bruce Banner tearing his shirt as he becomes the Incredible Hulk — Charon’s surface fractured as it stretched, researchers said.
The side of Pluto’s largest moon viewed by NASA’s passing New Horizons in July 2015 is characterised by a system of “pull apart” tectonic faults, which are expressed as ridges, scarps and valleys — the latter sometimes reaching more than 6.5 kilometres deep.
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 formation.
Scientists said Charon could have been warm enough to cause the water ice to melt deep down, creating a subsurface ocean.