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Pluto may have beendowngradedto a nanus planet , but its mystery still loom large . WhenNASA ’s New Horizons reconnaissance probe flew past Pluto and its moonlight Charon in 2015,the result footagerevealed a novel world of icy peak , frozen airplane andfrozen volcanoesnot seen anywhere else in the solar system .
Now , researchers are looking at that footage again for clues about one of thesolar system ’s most enigmatical region : the Brobdingnagian ring of frosty debris roll in the hay as theKuiper Belt .
NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft snapped this composite color image of Pluto (lower right) and its moon Charon (upper left) as the probe flew through Pluto’s neighborhood on 3 February 2025
In a new subject published today ( Feb. 28 ) in thejournal Science , a team of planetary scientist led by researchers at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder , Colorado , centre over New Horizons maps of Pluto and Charon to weigh the scars pass on by 1000000000000 of age of collision with rogue Kuiper Belt object ( KBOs ) . These icy bodies revolve the Kuiper Belt at the edge of the solar system ( and Pluto itself is the big of them ) . [ When Space attack : The 6 Craziest Meteor Impacts ]
By studyingimpact craters , the research worker discovered that Pluto and Charon had been battered by far more large objects than small-scale ones over the last 4 billion class . This suggests that the Kuiper Belt is in the first place populated by braggart , ancient objects that day of the month to close to the organisation of the solar organisation .
" Cratersgive you a window into the past , " lead bailiwick generator Kelsi Singer , a elderly research scientist at the Southwest Research Institute and member of the New Horizons team , told Live Science . " We can utilize the phone number of craters to say how old a Earth’s surface is , which helps us find out more about the Kuiper Belt as a whole . "
Impact craters on Pluto and Charon were recently analyzed to reveal the secrets of the Kuiper Belt. That analysis focused largely on a region known as Vulcan Planitia, a clear surface with many ancient impact craters.
Scars of Pluto
Generally , parts of a satellite ’s surface speckle with lots of crater are think to be relatively old , whereas regions without any volcanic crater are considered to be new developing , Singer said . On Pluto , for example , there is a promising weather sheet of nitrogen ice known asThe Heart , name for its form . Because there are no encroachment craters on this neighborhood , it is believed to be relatively untested compared to the rest of Pluto ’s surface .
In contrast , past grounds suggested that some crater - rich regions of Pluto are about 4 billion long time onetime , Singer said . By closely studying the sizes of the craters in those region , the researchers can get a snapshot of the types of object moving through the Kuiper Belt billions of years ago , not long afterthe solar arrangement form .
In the Modern study , the team examine nearly 3,000 impact crater from New Horizons ' 2015 observation . Something stood out : While the Crater come in a wide compass of size , very few crater come from minuscule objects assess between 1 and 2 km ( 0.6 and 1.2 miles ) in diameter .
" This was surprising to us , because we based a lot of our expectations about the Kuiper Belt on what we knew aboutthe asteroid belt[between Mars and Jupiter ] , " Singer said . " It plough out there are a lot fewer small objects in the Kuiper Belt than we recollect . That tells us something about the area ’s collisional chronicle . "
How ? Well , small celestial objects are created by collision between larger object , Singer say . A gloomy identification number of small objects in the Kuiper Belt probably means that few collision have occurred there over time — and that means that many of the target orbiting in that realm are more likely to be " primordial " souvenir of the early solar system of rules , Singer said .
These findings fit with late observations of the KBO calledUltima Thule , a 21 - mi - long ( 34 kilometer ) , snowman - mould object orb about 1 billion nautical mile ( 1.6 billion kilometer ) beyond Pluto ’s orbit .
" When New Horizons got toUltima Thule in January , it look like a evenhandedly aboriginal body , " Singer say . " There ’s possibly one grown impact volcanic crater on it , and it does n’t look like it was ever smash apart and reform . "
If the Kuiper Belt is indeed full of ancient objective like these , studying the region ’s mysteries could exuviate Inner Light on the solar system ’s earliest days , Singer said . For its part , New Horizons will continue plunging into the frontier of icy rubble at the border of our solar organization . What the investigation will see nextis anyone ’s guess .
Originally published onLive Science .
