New Images Of Pluto’s Moon Charon Reveal HUGE Valley Four Times As Long As Grand Canyon

Never-seen-before images of Pluto’s moon Charon have revealed a huge valley that’s four times as long as the Grand Canyon and twice as deep.

Captured by the New Horizons spacecraft, the startling images show a belt of canyons just north of the moon’s equator, stretching more than 1,000 miles.

“It looks like the entire crust of Charon has been split open,” said John Spencer from the Southwest Research Institute.

NASA scientists weren’t expecting to find such a varied landscape, but the new images of Charon have revealed a surprisingly ‘complex and violent history’.

“We thought the probability of seeing such interesting features on this satellite of a world at the far edge of our solar system was low,” said Ross Beyer from NASA’s Ames Research Center, “but I couldn’t be more delighted with what we see.”

At half the diameter of Pluto, Charon is the solar system’s largest moon relative to its host planet.

The team also found that the plains south of Charon’s massive canyon have fewer large craters than the regions to the north, suggesting that they’re significantly younger. The smoothness of the plains, as well as their grooves and faint ridges, are clear signs of wide-scale resurfacing, says NASA.

One theory is that the smooth surface is a result of a cold volcanic activity called cryovolcanism.

“The team is discussing the possibility that an internal water ocean could have frozen long ago, and the resulting volume change could have led to Charon cracking open, allowing water-based lavas to reach the surface at that time,” said Paul Schenk, from the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston.

Image credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI