Speculations are on over the existence of an ancient ocean on Pluto's moon. NASA's New Horizons probe will investigate the evidence of the underground ocean on Charon.

When the probe will pass-by Pluto in July 2015, scientists will be looking for cracks on Charon's surface, which may act as a hint for the ancient ocean. The temperature of Charon's surface temperature is -380 Fahrenheit, but scientists are of the view that subsurface ocean may have existed.

For long, scientists have purported that Charon had liquid oceans in the past. With the upcoming mission, researchers will get to know whether or not cracks are present on Charon's surface.

"Our model predicts different fracture patterns on the surface of Charon depending on the thickness of its surface ice, the structure of the moon's interior and how easily it deforms, and how its orbit evolved", said Alyssa Rhoden from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt.

Rhoden stated that they will compare the observations of Charon provided by New Horizons with various other predictions. After the comparison, Rhoden affirmed they will be able to know what the reality is and will also discover if the moon could have a subsurface ocean in the past.

Due to tidal forces being experienced by moons, they undergo deformation while they orbit their respective planets. Now, the question that arises is whether warming on Charon, Jupiter's moon Europa and Saturn's moon Enceladus is enough to maintain a liquid underground ocean.

But the problem is Charon is tidally locked with Pluto. Therefore, it no more experiences flexing forces, so even if any ocean would have been present it would have frozen. If a liquid ocean would have existed on Charon then there are possibilities that it also supported life.