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  Home arrow News arrow News from Space arrow two moons and a learning experience

 
two moons and a learning experience | Print |  E-mail
Written by staff   
Wednesday, 02 November 2005

>two more moons

The Hubble Space Telescope has detected what may be two new moons orbiting Pluto, giving the distant body a total of three moons.

This adds fuel to the ongoing debate of what, exactly, a planet is. Puto’s distant location in the Kuiper belt and its irregular orbit make some scientists say that it is not properly a planet at all. Moons certainly make Pluto seem planet-like, but some say that’s immaterial.

“Whether or not an object has a moon is not part of the criteria that we’ve considered, because so many small objects in the solar system have moons,” said Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute in recent press conference about the discovery.

>learning experience

A student-built European spacecraft has fallen silent shortly after deployment, according to a recent Spaceflight Now article. Student Space Exploration and Technology Initiative (SSETI) constructed the 137-pound satellite to take pictures of Earth, serve the amateur radio community and release three Cubesat picosatellites. Two of the Cubesats were deployed.

 
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