New Horizons parts Pluto with a shot of its puniest moon
NASA’s New Horizon’s spacecraft has done yeoman’s work at Pluto, having taken stunning images of the ex-planet and its major moon Charon. Now it’s taking off for the largely unseen Kuiper belt, but it grabbed one last image of the tiny moon Kerberos before leaving. It turns out that the body is smaller than thought at around 8 miles across, and consists of two distinctive “lobes.” Much like Comet 67P orbited by the ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft, the unusual shape of Kerberos may be the result of a collision between two smaller objects. Like Pluto’s other small moons, and several spots on the quasi-planet itself, it’s also coated with “relatively clean water ice,” making it highly reflective.
Source: NASA
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