LONDON: NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has spotted a strange dark patch at the pole of Pluto’s big moon Charon, further whetting researchers’ appetites ahead of the probe’s epic flyby of the dwarf planet system next month.
New Horizons has also detected a rich diversity of terrain types in Pluto’s “close approach hemisphere” the side of the planet New Horizons will zoom past at a distance of just 7,800 miles (12,500 kilometers) on July 14. The newly resolved features, which New Horizons captured in images taken from May 29 through June 19, are visible in a Pluto-Charon video NASA released June 23.
“This system is just amazing. The science team is just ecstatic with what we see on Pluto’s close approach hemisphere: Every terrain type we see on the planet — including both the brightest and darkest surface areas — are represented there. It’s a wonderland!” New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, said in a statement. “And about Charon — wow — I don’t think anyone expected Charon to reveal a mystery like dark terrains at its pole. Who ordered that?”
During a mission-update webcast June 23, New Horizons team members also reported that the spacecraft performed a course-adjusting engine burn on June 14 that will put the probe in an ideal position to observe Pluto and its moons during the upcoming close encounter.
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