Moons of Pluto Moons of Pluto The dwarf planet Pluto has five moons down to a detection limit of about 1 km in diameter. In order of distance from Pluto, they are Charon, Styx, Nix, Kerberos, and Hydra. Charon, the largest of the five moons, is mutually tidally locked with Pluto, and is massive enough that Pluto–Charon is sometimes considered a double dwarf planet. The innermost and largest moon, Charon, was discovered by James Christy on 22 June 1978, nearly half a century after Pluto was discovered. This led to a substantial revision in estimates of Pluto's size, which had previously assumed that
Exploration of Pluto launched in 2030, marking the 100th anniversary of Pluto's discovery, and spending 7-8 years traveling to the Pluto system. The Fusion-Enabled Pluto Orbiter and Lander was a 2017 phase I report funded by the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program. The report, written by principal investigator Stephanie Thomas of Princeton Satellite Systems, Inc., describes a Direct Fusion Drive (DFD) mission to Pluto. A fusion reactor would be used to send a 1000 kg orbiter and lander to the Pluto system in only four years (more than twice as fast as "New Horizons"). Global Aerospace Corporation presented a Pluto lander concept