Charon Flyover from New Horizons

Charon Flyover from New Horizons

Video Credit:
NASA,
JHUAPL,
SwRI,
P. Schenk & J. Blackwell
(LPI);
Music:
Juicy by ALBIS

Explanation:
What if you could fly over
Pluto‘s moon Charon — what might you see?

The New Horizons spacecraft did just this in 2015 July as it
zipped past Pluto and
Charon with cameras blazing.

The images recorded allowed for a digital reconstruction of much of
Charon‘s surface,
further enabling the creation of fictitious flights over Charon created from this data.

One such fanciful, minute-long, time-lapse video is
shown here with vertical heights and colors of
surface features digitally enhanced.

Your journey begins over a wide chasm that divides different types of
Charon’s landscapes,
a chasm that might have formed when
Charon froze through.

You soon turn
north and fly over a colorful depression dubbed
Mordor that,
one hypothesis holds, is an
unusual remnant from an ancient impact.

Your voyage continues over an
alien landscape
rich with never-before-seen craters, mountains, and
crevices.

The robotic New Horizons spacecraft has too much
momentum to ever return to
Pluto
and Charon and is now
headed out of our
Solar System.