New Horizons: Team spot Charon, the tiny moon of Pluto

Artist’s conception of the New Horizons spacecraft flying past Pluto and Charon, one of the dwarf planet’s moons. 

Credit: Johns Hopkins University/APL 

The New Horizons team spotted Charon, the tiny moon of Pluto in July, about six months ahead of when they expected to.

You can check it out in the images below.

The find is exciting in itself, but it also bodes well for the spacecraft's search for orbital debris to prepare for its close encounter with the system in July 2015.

Most of Pluto's moons were discovered while New Horizons was under development, or already on its way.

Mission planners are thus concerned that there could be moons out there that aren't discovered yet, moons that could pose a danger to the spacecraft if it ended up in the wrong spot at the wrong time.

That's why the team is engaging in long-range views to see what else is lurking in Pluto's vicinity.

"We're thrilled to see it, because it shows that our satellite-search techniques work, and that our camera is operating superbly, but it's also exciting just to see a third member of the Pluto system come into view, as proof that we're almost there," stated science team member John Spencer, of the Southwest Research Institute.

Hydra was spotted using the spacecraft's Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI), which took 48 images of 10 seconds apiece between July 18 and July 20.

Then the team used half the images, the ones that show Hydra better, to create the images you see above.

The spacecraft was still 267 million miles (430 million kilometers) from Pluto when the images were taken.

Another moon discovered around the same time as Hydra, Nix, is still too close to be seen given it's so close to Pluto, but just wait.

Meanwhile, scientists are busily trying to figure out where to send New Horizons after Pluto.

In July, researchers using the Hubble Space Telescope began a full-scale search for a suitable Kuiper Belt Object, which would be one of trillions of icy or rocky objects beyond Neptune's orbit.

Flying past a KBO would provide more clues as to how the Solar System formed, since these objects are considered leftovers of the chunks of matter that came together to form the planets.

Watch the difference: Pluto’s moon Hydra stands out in these images taken by the New Horizons spacecraft on July 18 and 20, 2014. 

Credit: NASA /Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory /Southwest Research Institute

ESA NASA CSA Hubble spots new moon around Pluto

Pluto’s new-found moon, visible as a speck of light in Hubble images, is estimated to be irregular in shape and between 10 and 25 kilometres across.

“The moons form a series of neatly nested orbits, a bit like Russian dolls,” said Mark Showalter of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, USA, leader of the scientific team that


The Pluto team is intrigued that such a small planet can have such a complex collection of satellites. The new discovery provides additional clues for unraveling how the Pluto system formed and evolved.

The favoured theory is that all the moons are relics of a collision between Pluto and another large Kuiper belt object billions of years ago.

Pluto’s largest moon, Charon, was discovered in 1978. Hubble observations in 2006 uncovered two additional small moons, Nix and Hydra. In 2011 another moon, known as P4, was found in Hubble data.

Provisionally designated S/2012 (134340) 1, or P5, the latest moon was detected in nine separate sets of images taken by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 on 26, 27 and 29 June, and 7 and 9 July 2012.

New Horizons, a NASA space probe, is currently en route to Pluto, with a high-speed flyby scheduled for 2015.

It will return the first ever detailed images of the Pluto system, which is so small and distant that even Hubble can barely see the largest features on its surface.

In the years following the New Horizons Pluto flyby, astronomers plan to use the infrared vision of Hubble’s planned successor, the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, for follow-up observations.

The James Webb Space Telescope will be able to study the surface chemistry of Pluto, its moons, and many other bodies that lie in the distant Kuiper Belt along with Pluto