Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 LAUREL, MD. — Pluto got the boot from planethood in 2006. But one of the dwarf planet’s moons, Charon, could get an upgrade, thanks to discussions August 14 during the Great Planet Debate Conference in Laurel, Md.
“Charon is not a satellite,” Keith Noll, a planetary scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, said during the meeting. “It meets the definitions of plutoid and dwarf planet, and if it weren’t orbiting Pluto, it would be a dwarf planet.”