New Moon Discovered Orbiting Pluto
And a NASA spacecraft may soon be able to pop by for a visit.
Astronomers estimate that the tiny fourth moon is between 8 and 21 miles (13 to 34 kilometers) wide. By contrast, Pluto's largest moon, Charon, is 648 miles (1,043 kilometers) across.
The dwarf planet's other moons, Nix and Hydra, are both in the range of 20 to 70 miles (32 to 113 kilometers) wide. (Related: "Pluto to Make a Star 'Wink Out' Twice.")
The new moon has been given the temporary designation P4.
But this moniker is "just a license plate to refer to it until we get a name, and we're working on that, but we don't yet have a proposal to make," said Alan Stern, principal investigator of NASA's Pluto-bound New Horizons spacecraft and a member of the P4
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