NASA releases first close-up images of Pluto’s moons Nix and Hydra

For the first time, space enthusiasts and astronomy buffs are able to get a good look at two of Pluto’s smaller moons, as NASA officials have released new images of Nix and Hydra captured by the New Horizon’s spacecraft during its flyby of the distant dwarf planet.

According to The Telegraph and The Verge, both satellites are roughly the same size but could not be much different in other ways. Nix resembles a pink jelly bean that is 26 miles long and 22 miles wide, while Hydra is a lopsided moon that is marked by multiple dips and curves.

The images were taken by New Horizon’s Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on July 14, and at the time the photographs were taken, the probe was 102,000 miles away from Nix and 143,000 miles away from Hydra. Though blurry, the images are far higher in quality than earlier pictures of the moons, thanks to the high-resolution of the LORRI instrument.

These new images are the best obtained yet of both Nix and Hydra, which were only discovered 10 years ago using the Hubble Space Telescope. Interestingly, The Telegraph noted that the team behind that feat was led by New Horizons project scientist Hal Weaver from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.

An up-close and personal look at these miniature moons

While the majority of the surface color of Nix is grayish in color, it also has a distinctive red tint in one area resembling a bull’s-eye. NASA researchers believe this feature could be a crater, and once additional data is downlinked to Earth, they should learn more about this unusual area.

“Additional compositional data has already been taken of Nix, but is not yet downlinked. It will tell us why this region is redder than its surroundings,” said Carly Howett, a mission scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. She told The Telegraph that the findings were “so tantalizing” that it was “hard to be patient for more Nix data to be downlinked.”

As for Hydra, the shape of the moon has been compared to that of the state of Michigan, and the surface of the moon appears to be home to at least two craters, one of which is located primarily in the shadows, according to NASA. The upper portion of Hydra is darker in appearance than the rest of the moon, suggesting that different areas may have different compositions. Finally, based on the images, scientists estimate that it is about 34 miles long and 25 miles wide.

“Before last week, Hydra was just a faint point of light, so it’s a surreal experience to see it become an actual place, as we see its shape and spot recognizable features on its surface for the first time,” mission science collaborator Ted Stryk from Tennessee’s Roane State Community College told The Verge.

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Image Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI