Charon's Slow Spin Reveals a Cold Dawn for Pluto’s Largest Moon
Nature Communications researchers, using data from NASA’s New Horizons flyby, show Charon’s rotation slowed from about 14.3 hours to about 153 hours due to despinning. The crust was initially thicker (roughly 30–36 km) and thinned over time, compressing fault lines and creating the ridges and highlands seen today, offering a new way to infer the early orbital and thermal state of icy satellites.