The Geology of Pluto and Charon Through the Eyes of New Horizons

Abstract

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has revealed the complex geology of Pluto and Charon. Pluto's encounter hemisphere shows ongoing surface geological activity centered on a vast basin containing a thick layer of volatile ices that appears to be involved in convection and advection, with a crater retention age no greater than $\approx$10 Ma. Surrounding terrains show active glacial flow, apparent transport and rotation of large buoyant water-ice crustal blocks, and pitting, likely by sublimation erosion and/or collapse. More enigmatic features include tall mounds with central depressions that are conceivably cryovolcanic, and ridges with complex bladed textures. Pluto also has ancient cratered terrains up to ~4 Ga old that are extensionally fractured and extensively mantled and perhaps eroded by glacial or other processes. Charon does not appear to be currently active, but experienced major extensional tectonism and resurfacing (probably cryovolcanic) nearly 4 billion years ago. Impact crater populations on Pluto and Charon are not consistent with the steepest proposed impactor size-frequency distributions proposed for the Kuiper belt.

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Cited by in corpus (57)

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• The nitrogen cycles on Pluto over seasonal and astronomical timescales
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• Pluto's Haze as a Surface Material
• Formation of Charon's Red Poles From Seasonally Cold-Trapped Volatiles
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• GJ 273: On the formation, dynamical evolution and habitability of a planetary system hosted by an M dwarf at 3.75 parsec
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• New Horizons Constraints on Charon's Present Day Atmosphere
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• Crater Density Predictions for New Horizons flyby target 2014 MU69
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• Modeling Pluto's Minimum Pressure: Implications for Haze Production
• Measuring temperature and ammonia hydrate ice on Charon in 2015 from Keck/OSIRIS spectra
• Linking the formation and fate of exo-Kuiper belts within solar system analogues
• Morphological Comparison of Blocks in Chaos Terrains on Pluto, Europa, and Mars
• The Contraction/Expansion History of Charon with implication for its Planetary Scale Tectonic Belt
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• Laboratory Measurement of Volatile Ice Vapor Pressures with a Quartz Crystal Microbalance
• Evidence for a rapid decrease in Pluto's atmospheric pressure revealed by a stellar occultation in 2019
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• Volatile evolution and atmospheres of Trans-Neptunian Objects
• A Search for Temporal Changes on Pluto and Charon
• New Constraints on Pluto's Sputnik Planitia Ice Sheet from a Coupled Reorientation-Climate Model
• The Fate of Debris in the Pluto-Charon System
• Impact Craters on Pluto and Charon and Terrain Age Estimates
• Charon: A brief history of tides
• On the Origin of the Pluto System
• Pluto Geologic Map: Use of Crater Data to Understand Age Relationships
• Solar system Deep Time-Surveys of atmospheres, surfaces, and rings
• Twin Worlds, Divergent Fates: How Obliquity has differently shaped Pluto's and Triton's landscapes and climates
• Vital Signs: Seismology of ocean worlds
• Trans-Neptunian Space and the Post-Pluto Paradigm
• The flow and evolution of ice-sucrose crystal mushes
• The Tidal-Thermal Evolution of the Pluto-Charon System
• New Investigations of Dark Floored Pits in the Volatile Ice of Sputnik Planitia on Pluto
• Pluto Follow On Missions: Background, Rationale, and New Mission Recommendations
• Investigating the extent of bladed terrain on Pluto via photometric surface roughness
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