Charon’s Canyon-Riddled Belt May Have Formed Through Colossal Moon-Wide Cracking

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The equatorial tectonic belt, marked in blue, on the enigmatic moon of Charon. NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI

Thanks to New Horizon’s epic jaunt to the ends of the Solar System, new discoveries about Pluto are seemingly endless. A new study eschews this trend and instead shines some light on Charon, one of its five moons. As the preprint on arXiv reveals, the enormous network of canyons that mark its equatorial region may have been formed by a gargantuan double-whammy of contraction that spanned the entire moon.