Pluto likely acquired large moon Charon in a “kiss and capture” collision billions of years ago. It may have created a subsurface ocean on the icy dwarf planet.

Simulations suggest Pluto and its largest moon may have gently stuck together for a few hours before Charon settled into a stable orbit around the dwarf planet

New study reveals Pluto and Charon’s origin: a unique "kiss and capture" collision redefines how binary systems form.

Pluto and Charon may have formed through a “kiss and capture” mechanism, with the two icy bodies colliding and becoming temporarily stuck together, spinning in a cosmic dance before separating into two objects that are forever bound in orbit,

"We were definitely surprised by the 'kiss' part of kiss-and-capture. There hasn't really been a kind of impact before where the two bodies only temporarily merge before re-separating!"

Pluto's big moon Charon may have a different origin story than scientists suspected. New research suggests the two bodies engaged in a celestial kiss and tango.

Unlike how scientists believe Earth's moon formed billions of years ago, Pluto and its biggest moon, Charon, didn't have a messy breakup. New computer simulations show the primitive dwarf planet and the object that struck it likely had an unforeseen kind of cosmic collision.

The “demoted” dwarf planet Pluto and its largest moon Charon make an unusual pair, and for decades, scientists have been discussing how the binary system—in which each mutually orbits the other—came to be.