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NASA's Horizons Spacecraft To Probe Pluto Moon For Underground Ocean

Posted by samzenpus on from the finding-water dept.

An anonymous reader writes NASA's New Horizons spacecraft is moving towards Pluto to explore Charon, one of Pluto's moons. The aim of the mission is to search of evidence of an ancient underground ocean on the moon. "Our model predicts different fracture patterns on the surface of Charon depending on the thickness of its surface ice, the structure of the moon's interior and how easily it deforms, and how its orbit evolved," said Alyssa Rhoden of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "By comparing the actual New Horizons observations of Charon to the various predictions, we can see what fits best and discover if Charon could have had a subsurface ocean in its past, driven by high eccentricity."

7 of 47 comments (clear)

  1. Ocean of what by rossdee · · Score: 4, Informative

    Here on Earth we think of Oceans of water, but way out at Pluto's orbit it could be something esle (ammonia, methane, hydrogen, nitrogen...

    1. Re:Ocean of what by dbIII · · Score: 5, Funny

      Either way it oort to be interesting.

    2. Re:Ocean of what by sconeu · · Score: 4, Funny

      Oh, just kuiper mouth shut if you're going to be critical!

      --
      General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
  2. quite a rapid flyby by peter303 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    In order to get the probe there in the career lifetimes of the investigators and minimize decay of the power source and instruments, this probe has the fastest velocity of any probe so far. It took only eight hours to pass the Moon's orbit. That gives it about a three day window to make measurements before heading off into the Kuiper belt (and 2nd plutoid if they can find one soon).

    1. Re:quite a rapid flyby by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 3, Funny

      In order to get the probe there in the career lifetimes of the investigators and minimize decay of the power source and instruments, this probe has the fastest velocity of any probe so far. It took only eight hours to pass the Moon's orbit. That gives it about a three day window to make measurements before heading off into the Kuiper belt (and 2nd plutoid if they can find one soon).

      I don't fully understand that unit of velocity - can you frame it in Kessel runs per parsec?

      --
      Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
  3. KSP by Thanshin · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Orbit each planet.
    Land a probe on each planet.
    Land a probe on each moon.
    Bring back samples from each location.
    Colonize.

    Until we do all those, we are cavemen with delusions of grandeur.

  4. Re:Meanwhile... by MrLogic17 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    There's plenty of water in Africa. You haven't actually been there, have you?
    I have. I've seen what what's there on the ground. There are endless well-drilling, housing, and food projects funded by the western world, and each one is a success. The problem is the local corruption and lack of rule of law. No matter how much established nations invest in the area, local corruption will un-do and destroy.

    If you have a proposal for how NASA can fix this problem, I'm all ears.