How did Pluto capture its largest moon, Charon?

Pluto pulled Adeene Denton into its orbit during her undergraduate internship at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston. It was summer 2015, when the New Horizons spacecraft zoomed past the dwarf planet. 

“The Pluto flyby happened, and I was in the right place at the right time — perfectly positioned to fall in love with it,” says Denton, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo. “And I did.”

The dwarf planet became the center of her world. She ran computer simulations to study how objects may have hit Pluto, shaping its history. Some of her research suggests that Pluto acquired its largest moon, Charon, through a “kiss-and-capture” collision, and that the dwarf planet’s heart-shaped feature may hide the rocky remnant from an ancient impact.

Denton is currently taking a break from Pluto. Last year, she was an astronomer in residence at Grand Canyon National Park, where she, a lifelong dancer, choreographed a dance connecting the canyon’s history with space exploration. Now, Denton is studying Saturn’s moons, looking at why Enceladus, with its icy geysers, is more geologically active than its neighbors. “There are so many cool solar system bodies out there that we know so little about,” she says.