Moons of Pluto while searching for Plutonian rings. Styx, announced on 7 July 2012, was discovered while looking for potential hazards for "New Horizons". Charon is about half the diameter of Pluto and is so massive (nearly one eighth of the mass of Pluto) that the system's barycenter lies between them, approximately 960 km above Pluto's surface. Charon and Pluto are also tidally locked, so that they always present the same face toward each other. The IAU General Assembly in August 2006 considered a proposal that Pluto and Charon be reclassified as a double planet, but the proposal was abandoned. Pluto's four small
Geography of Pluto Geography of Pluto The geography of Pluto entails the delineation and characterization of regions on Pluto. Plutonian geography is mainly focused on what is called physical geography on Earth; that is, the distribution of physical features across Pluto and their cartographic representations. On 14 July 2015, the "New Horizons" spacecraft became the first spacecraft to fly by Pluto. During its brief flyby, "New Horizons" made detailed geographical measurements and observations of Pluto and its moons. Pluto may be defined as having retrograde rotation and an axial tilt of 60 degrees, or prograde rotation and a tilt of 120 degrees. Following