In a study published recently in Nature Geoscience, researchers unveiled a new theory explaining the formation of Charon, Pluto's largest moon. The team from the University of Arizona proposed that ...

For decades, astronomers have tried to determine how Pluto acquired its unusually large moon Charon, which is about half the size of the dwarf planet. Now, new research suggests that Pluto and Charon ...

Using advanced models, SwRI led new research that indicates that the formation of Pluto and Charon may parallel that of the Earth-Moon system. In the resulting “kiss-and-capture” regime, Pluto and ...

Pluto's largest moon, Charon, likely formed through a capture event in the early, crowded Kuiper Belt. Three-body encounters and tidal forces allowed Charon to lose energy and become permanently bound ...

Eons ago, in the frigid depths of our solar system, a dramatic collision occurred between two icy worlds. Instead of a catastrophic smash-up, the two bodies "kissed," merging temporarily like a ...

Pluto and Charon’s meet-cute may have started with a kiss. New computer simulations of the dwarf planet and its largest moon suggest that the pair got together in a “kiss-and-capture” collision, where ...

JWST detected carbon dioxide and hydrogen peroxide on Charon's surface. Hydrogen peroxide suggests ongoing chemical reactions on Charon. Charon's carbon dioxide likely came from below its surface.

Pluto pulled Adeene Denton into its orbit during her undergraduate internship at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston. It was summer 2015, when the New Horizons spacecraft zoomed past the ...

This close up look at Pluto and Charon, taken as part of the mission's latest optical navigation ("OpNav") campaign from Jan. 25-31, 2015, comes from the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on ...

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