Scientists have discovered a new type of planetary collision called “kiss-and-capture,” where Pluto and proto-Charon briefly ...

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 ...

"We were definitely surprised by the 'kiss' part of kiss-and-capture. There hasn't really been a kind of impact before where the two bodies only temporarily merge before re-separating!" ...

Charon is large in size relative to Pluto, and is locked in a tight orbit with the dwarf planet. A new simulation suggests how it ended up there. By Jonathan O’Callaghan Some 4.5 billion years ...

With Charon being half Pluto’s size, experts have struggled to explain how it ended up in the dwarf planet’s domain. Now, a team of researchers has suggested that Pluto may have secured Charon ...

Pluto landed its largest moon, Charon, with a 'kiss'—overturning decades of scientific assumptions about how planetary bodies form and evolve. This is the conclusion of a new study, conducted at ...

For billions of years, Pluto and its largest moon Charon have been facing each other in a mutual tidal lock. Since it’s about half the size of Pluto, the moon and its planet are sometimes ...

The report, published in “Nature Geoscience,” describes how the minuscule dwarf planet could lure in Charon, a space rock nearly half its size, to orbit. The authors suggest that Pluto and ...

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 ...

A new study suggests that the origin of Pluto's largest moon was quite different than our own. Here's what you need to know.