According to a new NASA study, the cracks in the icy surface of Pluto's moon Charon could reveal whether inside was warm enough to maintain a subsurface ocean of liquid water.
Pluto is a distant world that orbit around the Sun is 29 times farther than Earth. The environment on Pluto and its moons is too cold, 380 degrees Celsius, enough to have liquid water on its surface.
The size and remoteness of tiny Pluto make it difficult to observe, but in July 2015 the NASA New Horizons will be the first spacecraft to visit Pluto and Charon to provide more detailed comments.
"Our model predicts different fracture patterns on the surface of Charon, depending on the thickness of the ice surface, the interior structure of the Moon and the ease with which, and how it evolved its orbit deforms" said Alyssa Rhoden NASA.
Some moons of the gas giant planets of the outer solar system have cracks that prove the presence of an ocean in the interior, such as the moon Europa Jupiter.
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