People around the world are interested now, more than ever, about the dwarf planet Pluto and its moon, Charon. This became apparent after the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) released pictures of these two heavenly bodies taken by the cameras from its New Horizons spacecraft.
The most excited and shocked about the new photos of Pluto and Charon, however, are space scientists, who see these images as an opportunity to know more about these parts of the solar system.
Alan Stern, the New Horizons project's principal investigator, said the new images will definitely trigger further studies and theories about Pluto and its moon.
"It is going to send a lot of geophysicists back to the drawing board," Stern said at a briefing held Wednesday at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland.
Among the discoveries mission scientists find most baffling about Pluto is the fact that the dwarf planet and its moon do not have much craters, despite the fact that they are located at the edge of the solar system, where they are vulnerable to being hit by rocks, ice and other materials.
Why are the surfaces of Pluto and Charon not pockmarked? Scientists believe that just like Jupiter and Saturn, bigger planets with big moons, Pluto is a geologically active planet.
Another puzzling fact about Pluto is the presence of towering mountains on its surface. Some scientists think this is an indication of the presence of a significant amount of ice water on the dwarf planet's surface.
"We can be very sure that water is there in great abundance," Stern said.
As for Charon, space scientists are amazed at the presence of several geographical features on its surface including valleys, cliffs, and a foreboding reddish region at its northern pole.
"Charon blew our socks off. It is a small world with canyons, cliffs and dark areas that are still mysterious to us," deputy mission manager Cathy Olkin said.
