In a groundbreaking discovery, NASA’s Webb Space Telescope has detected traces of carbon dioxide and hydrogen peroxide on the surface of Charon, Pluto’s largest moon. This revelation offers new insights into the composition and evolution of distant celestial bodies in our solar system.
Charon, which is about half the size of Pluto, has long intrigued scientists with its icy surface. Previous missions, including the flyby of NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft in 2015, revealed that the moon’s exterior was coated with water ice. However, the presence of other chemicals remained elusive due to limitations in detecting certain infrared wavelengths.
The advanced capabilities of the Webb Telescope have now filled in those gaps. “There’s a lot of fingerprints of chemicals that we otherwise wouldn’t get to see,” said Carly Howett, a New Horizons scientist not involved in the recent study. The detection of carbon dioxide and hydrogen peroxide marks a significant advancement in our understanding of Charon’s surface chemistry.
Published recently in the journal Nature Communications, the research suggests that hydrogen peroxide on Charon may have formed from radiation interacting with water molecules on its surface. Meanwhile, the carbon dioxide might be the result of impacts that bring the gas to the surface, according to study co-author Silvia Protopapa from the Southwest Research Institute.
Pluto and its moons reside in the Kuiper Belt, a distant region of our solar system over 3 billion miles (4.83 billion kilometers) from the sun. The extreme cold of this region makes it unlikely to support life as we know it. Nonetheless, the discovery of these compounds is crucial for understanding the processes that shape celestial bodies in the outer solar system.
The latest findings not only shed light on Charon’s formation and evolution but also have broader implications for the study of other remote moons and planets. By uncovering the chemical fingerprints hidden on Charon’s surface, scientists hope to unlock more secrets about the origins of our solar system.
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NASA's Webb telescope detects carbon dioxide traces on Pluto's moon
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