Charon (moon)
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Charon, formal designation Pluto I, is the largest of the five known natural satellites of the dwarf planet Pluto. It has a mean radius of 606 km. Charon is a planetary-mass moon and the sixth-largest
Charon's discovery at the Naval Observatory Flagstaff Station as a time-varying bulge on the image of Pluto (seen near the top at left, but absent on the right). Negative image.
Size comparisons: Earth, the Moon, and Charon
Comparison between Pluto's Sputnik Planitia and Charon's informally named Vulcan Planitia
Charon's night side seen by New Horizons
New Horizons
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New Horizons is an interplanetary space probe launched as a part of NASA's New Frontiers program. Launched in 2006, it became the first spacecraft to perform a flyby study and capture high-resolution
Charon (moon)
…by cryovolcanic eruptions on the moon, or may have been transferred over 19,000 km (12,000 mi) from the atmosphere of Pluto to the orbiting moon. The New Horizons spacecraft, the only probe to visit the Pluto system, approached Charon to within 27,000 km (17,000 mi) in 2015. Charon was discovered by United States…
New Horizons before launch
Early concept art of the New Horizons spacecraft. The mission, led by the Applied Physics Laboratory and Alan Stern, eventually became the first mission to Pluto.
An artist's impression of New Horizons' close encounter with the Plutonian system
View of Mission Operations at the Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland (July 14, 2015)