THE EVOLUTION OF CHARON
• Date: Activity:
4.5 billion years ago
Two Kuiper Belt objects collided, going into orbit around a shared barycentre.
• Date: Activity:
1930
Discovery of Pluto by Clyde Tombaugh.
• Date: Activity:
1978
Discovery of Charon by James Christy.
• Date: Activity:
1980s
Pluto and Charon eclipsed one another several times, allowing astronomers to study their spectra and work out their surface compositions.
• Date: Activity:
1994
Hubble imaged Pluto and Charon from 4.4 billion kilometres (2.7 billion miles) away.
• Date: Activity:
2007
Observations by the Gemini Observatory suggested active cryogeysers on Charon’s surface.
• Date: Activity:
2015
New Horizons arrived in the system, gathered data and then left.
• Date: Activity:
2017
NASA’s Ames Research Center confirmed Charon once had active plate tectonics like Earth.
• Date: Activity:
2019
A geomorphological map of Charon’s surface was published, dividing the surface into 16 types.