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Two additional moons were imaged by astronomers of the Pluto Companion Search Team preparing for the New Horizons mission and working with the Hubble Space Telescope on 15 May 2005, which received the provisional designations S/2005 P 1 and S/2005 P 2.
Pluto, discovered by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930, is an interesting target for planetary exploration, but Pluto presents significant challenges for exploration because of its small mass and great distance from Earth. In 1964, Gary Flandro of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory proposed a mission called Grand Tour, taking advantage of the fact that an ...
Nix is a natural satellite of Pluto, with a diameter of 49.8 km (30.9 mi) across its longest dimension. [3] It was discovered along with Pluto's outermost moon Hydra on 15 May 2005 by astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope, [1] and was named after Nyx, the Greek goddess of the night. [10] Nix is the third moon of Pluto by distance ...
Since the first blurred images of the moon (1), images showing Pluto and Charon resolved into separate disks were taken for the first time by the Hubble Space Telescope in the 1990s (2). The telescope was responsible for the best, yet low-quality images of the moon.
Hydra was discovered along with Nix by astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope on 15 May 2005, [1] and was named after the Hydra, the nine-headed underworld serpent in Greek mythology. [14] By distance, Hydra is the fifth and outermost moon of Pluto, orbiting beyond Pluto's fourth moon Kerberos. [11]
Styx (moon) Styx is a small natural satellite of Pluto whose discovery was announced on 11 July 2012. It was discovered by use of the Hubble Space Telescope, and is the smallest of the five known moons of Pluto. It was imaged along with Pluto and Pluto's other moons by the New Horizons spacecraft in July 2015, albeit poorly with only a single ...
Maps produced from images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), together with Pluto's light curve and the periodic variations in its infrared spectra, indicate that Pluto's surface is very varied, with large differences in both brightness and color, [11] with albedos between 0.49 and 0.66. [12]
Images from the Hubble Space Telescope in 1996 cover 85% of Pluto and show large albedo features down to about 75° South. [191] [192] This is enough to show the extent of the temperate-zone maculae. Later images had slightly better resolution, due to minor improvements in Hubble instrumentation. [193]