Full Moon Guide: September - October For the first time, astronomers have uncovered evidence of water vapor in the atmosphere of Jupiter's moon Ganymede. On April 17 New Horizons will reach a rare milepost — 50 astronomical units from the Sun or 50 times farther from the Sun than Earth is.
A technique for scanning Mars rocks for microscopic fossils is also being developed to hunt for microbes on Enceladus, Titan, and Europa. Phobos orbits through a stream of charged atoms and molecules that flow off the atmosphere of Mars, new research shows. Pluto is named for the god of the underworld. The huge size of Charon miles or 1, kilometers in diameter sometimes leads scientists to refer to Pluto and Charon as a double dwarf planet or binary system.
Pluto's diameter is 1, miles 2, km. Pluto and Charon are just 12, miles 19, km apart, less than the distance by flight between London and Sydney, Australia. Charon's orbit around Pluto takes 6.
This means Charon hovers over the same spot on Pluto's surface , and the same side of Charon always faces Pluto, a phenomenon known as tidal locking. While Charon is mostly gray, its northern pole has a reddish tint. Most of the moon is covered with water-ice, but the red region is likely made up of shredded pieces of Pluto's atmosphere. The moon has a surprisingly young surface, suggestive that it once housed an ocean in its interior, one that would have long ago frozen.
Compared with most of solar system's planets and moons, the Pluto-Charon system is tipped on its side in relation to the sun. Also, Pluto's rotation is retrograde compared to the other worlds — it spins backwards, from east to west. These are two to three times farther away from Pluto than Charon. While NASA's New Horizons mission was able to capture significant details about Charon during its flyby, it was only able to view the other four moons from a distance. The rover will be delivered to the Moon's surface in late VIPER is the first resource-mapping mission on the surface of another celestial body.
Full Moon Guide: September - October For the first time, astronomers have uncovered evidence of water vapor in the atmosphere of Jupiter's moon Ganymede. On April 17 New Horizons will reach a rare milepost — 50 astronomical units from the Sun or 50 times farther from the Sun than Earth is. Pluto Have we sent spacecrafts to Pluto? Does Pluto have an atmosphere? What is Pluto made of? How did Pluto and its moons get their names?
Does Pluto have any moons? Is Pluto sometimes closer to us than Neptune?
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