Scientists using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have discovered a new moon orbiting Pluto, NASA announced late Wednesday.
The new moon, which is between just 6 and 15 miles across, is the fifth found to be orbiting the dwarf planet, and fittingly named P5. NASA released the following Hubble image showing all of Pluto’s moons, with the new P5 indicated in green.
Source: Hubblesite.org
P5, which has the widest orbit around Pluto at 58,00 miles, was discovered in an image taken by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 on July 7. Scientists believe the discovery will shed new light on Pluto and its moons developed over time, as well as help NASA’s unmanned New Horizons spacecraft avoid being wrecked when it flies through the system in 2015.
“The discovery of so many small moons indirectly tells us that there must be lots of small particles lurking unseen in the Pluto system,” said Harold Weaver, a physicist, in a NASA statement.
