NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has made a groundbreaking discovery on Charon, Pluto's largest moon, detecting carbon dioxide and hydrogen peroxide on its icy surface for the first time. This finding, published in Nature Communications, was made by astronomers from the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado.
Charon, which measures approximately 1,207 kilometers in diameter, is located in the Kuiper Belt, a region filled with icy remnants and dwarf planets at the edge of our solar system. Previous missions, including NASA's New Horizons in 2015, provided limited information about Charon's composition, primarily revealing water ice, ammonia, and organic materials.
The new observations indicate that Charon's surface contains a layer of carbon dioxide, likely exposed through impact events, and hydrogen peroxide, formed by solar radiation interacting with its icy surface. These compounds suggest that Charon's surface chemistry is complex and has been influenced by solar and cosmic radiation.
Silvia Protopapa, a co-investigator of the New Horizons mission, emphasized the significance of these findings, noting that Charon is the only medium-sized Kuiper Belt object that has been geologically mapped. The presence of carbon dioxide and hydrogen peroxide could provide insights into the moon's formation and the early solar system.
While these compounds do not indicate life, they are important for understanding the chemical processes that could support biological precursors. The James Webb Telescope will continue to study Charon to uncover more about its surface composition and the evolution of icy bodies in the Kuiper Belt.