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Craters of the Pluto-Charon SystemNASA's New Horizons flyby mission of the Pluto-Charon binary system and its four moons provided humanity with its first spacecraft-based look at a large Kuiper Belt Object beyond Triton. Excluding this system, multiple Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) have been observed for only 20 years from Earth, and the KBO size distribution is unconstrained except among the largest objects. Because small KBOs will remain beyond the capabilities of ground-based observatories for the foreseeable future, one of the best ways to constrain the small KBO population is to examine the craters they have made on the Pluto-Charon system. The first step to understanding the crater population is to map it. In this work, we describe the steps undertaken to produce a robust crater database of impact features on Pluto, Charon, and their two largest moons, Nix and Hydra. These include an examination of different types of images and image processing, and we present an analysis of variability among the crater mapping team, where crater diameters were found to average +/-10% uncertainty across all sizes measured (approx.0.5-300 km). We also present a few basic analyses of the crater databases, finding that Pluto's craters' differential size-frequency distribution across the encounter hemisphere has a power-law slope of approximately -3.1 +/- 0.1 over diameters D approx. = 15-200 km, and Charon's has a slope of -3.0 +/- 0.2 over diameters D approx. = 10-120 km; it is significantly shallower on both bodies at smaller diameters. We also better quantify evidence of resurfacing evidenced by Pluto's craters in contrast with Charon's. With this work, we are also releasing our database of potential and probable impact craters: 5287 on Pluto, 2287 on Charon, 35 on Nix, and 6 on Hydra.
Document ID
20170007522
Acquisition Source
Goddard Space Flight Center
Document Type
Reprint (Version printed in journal)
Authors
Robbins, Stuart J.
(Southwest Research Inst. Boulder, CO, United States)
Singer, Kelsi N.
(Southwest Research Inst. Boulder, CO, United States)
Bray, Veronica J.
(Arizona Univ. Tucson, AZ, United States)
Schenk, Paul
(Lunar and Planetary Inst. Houston, TX, United States)
Lauer, Todd R.
(National Optical Astronomy Observatories Tucson, AZ, United States)
Weaver, Harold A.
(Johns Hopkins Univ. Baltimore, MD, United States)
Runyon, Kirby
(Johns Hopkins Univ. Baltimore, MD, United States)
Mckinnon, William B.
(Washington Univ. Saint Louis, MO, United States)
Beyer, Ross A.
(Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Inst. Moffett Field, CA, United States)
Porter, Simon
(Southwest Research Inst. Boulder, CO, United States)
White, Oliver L.
(NASA Ames Research Center Moffett Field, CA, United States)
Hofgartner, Jason D.
(Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Zangari, Amanda M.
(Southwest Research Inst. Boulder, CO, United States)
Moore, Jeffrey M.
(NASA Ames Research Center Moffett Field, CA, United States)
Young, Leslie A.
(Southwest Research Inst. Boulder, CO, United States)
Spencer, John R.
(Southwest Research Inst. Boulder, CO, United States)
Binzel, Richard P.
(Massachusetts Inst. of Tech. Cambridge, MA, United States)
Buie, Marc W.
(Southwest Research Inst. Boulder, CO, United States)
Buratti, Bonnie J.
(Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Cheng, Andrew F.
(Johns Hopkins Univ. Baltimore, MD, United States)
Grundy, William M.
(Lowell Observatory Flagstaff, AZ, United States)
Linscott, Ivan R.
(Stanford Univ. Stanford, CA, United States)
Reitsema, Harold J.
(Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp. Boulder, CO, United States)
Reuter, Dennis C.
(NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, MD United States)
Showalter, Mark R.
(Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Inst. Moffett Field, CA, United States)
Tyler, G. Len
(Stanford Univ. Stanford, CA, United States)
Olkin, Catherine B.
(Southwest Research Inst. Boulder, CO, United States)
Ennico, Kimberly S.
(NASA Ames Research Center Moffett Field, CA, United States)
Stern, S. Alan
(Southwest Research Inst. Boulder, CO, United States)
Date Acquired
August 10, 2017
Publication Date
September 30, 2016
Publication Information
Publication: Icarus
Publisher: Elsevier
Volume: 287
ISSN: 0019-1035
e-ISSN: 1090-2643
Subject Category
Space Sciences (General)
Report/Patent Number
GSFC-E-DAA-TN42831
Funding Number(s)
CONTRACT_GRANT: NNX10AM96A
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Other

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