Death Star lurks near Saturn

A spacecraft from Earth has found Darth Vader's Death Star lurking deep in the solar system. The deadly battle station from Star Wars was snapped by the Cassini probe against the backdrop of Saturn's brilliant rings. It seems galactic tyrant Darth has parked his star-destroying weapon close to home and is waiting for the chance to target our own sun. Or that's what it looks like. In fact this astonishing likeness to the Death Star, just released by NASA, is one of the planet Saturn's many moons, Mimas. And rather than being the legendary monstrous fighting machine, it is a rocky world like our own moon, 247 miles wide. What looks like the Death Star's deadly superlaser dish is in fact a giant, 80-mile wide crater blasted out of Mimas by an asteroid impact. Mimas's likeness to the Death Star is simply an extraordinary coincidence. Star Wars creator George Lucas could not have known what the distant world looked like close up. Robin Scagell, of the UK's Society for Popular Astronomy, said last night: "It is an amazing image and an amazing likeness - and it is going to make plenty of Star Wars fans look twice." Cassini, part of a joint Nasa-European mission, is in orbit around Saturn, the second biggest planet in our solar system. UK scientists scored a massive success in January when the Huygens probe, which had been carried piggyback by Cassini, landed on another of Saturn's moons, Titan.

Third time lucky for Hayabusa A spacecraft is preparing to fly home after the first ever soft landing on an asteroid. The unmanned Japanese probe Hayabusa touched down today on a 600-yard long space rock called Itokawa. It blasted a metal pellet into the asteroid's surface so it could collect dust and rubble ejected. Scientists at mission control confirmed last night that the probe had taken off again from the asteroid. Now £100million Hayabusa will return to Earth and parachute the samples collected to a landing in the Australian Outback in June 2007. Yesterday's landing was third-time lucky for Hayabusa - it means Falcon - which has been flying alongside the asteroid for weeks after a 620million mile journey. Two weeks ago it sent a tea-caddy sized robot called Minerva to hop around on the asteroid - but it is thought to have gone into orbit instead. Apart from a 3D camera, it was also carrying the names of 100 people in Liverpool, collected by city asteroid expert Dr Benny Peiser, among a million gathered worldwide. Then Hayabusa failed in a previous attempt to touch down on sausage-shaped Itokawa after problems with its flight controls. Space scientists want to learn more about what asteroids are made of to help them prepare for those that threaten to collide with the Earth. One the size of Itokawa could destroy a city the size of London or create a devastating tidal wave. Nasa's Deep Impact probe fired a smart bomb the size of a fridge to blast a crater in a comet called Tempel 1 in July.

Energy-shaving network Energy chiefs are to cover a desert with more than 30,000 giant "shaving mirrors" to capture the sun's power and turn it into electricity. Two "solar farms" will be set up with the mirrors in California, each more than 11 yards wide, New Scientist reports today. One with 20,000 mirrors will be set up near Los Angeles, the other smaller farm near San Diego. They will focus the sun's rays to heat tanks of gas that will drive pistons to produce power for the US grid. The project to capture solar energy is being put together by Stirling Energy Systems of Phoenix, Arizona.

Harry Potter works his magic in space Harry Potter's latest movie got its space premiere yesterday. Nasa broadcast a special showing of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire to astronauts aboard the International Space Station. They worked their magic after a request to see the film from Commander Bill McArthur who is on a six-month mission aboard the orbiting outpost. Nasa contacted movie makers Warner Bros who agreed to beaming up the one-off special showing. Bill and Russian cosmonaut sat back and enjoyed their out-of-this-world presentation - though they didn't have any popcorn. The film hit UK cinemas last week. Astronauts are kept very busy on the space station but have built up a library of DVDs, CDs, books and magazines for times when they can relax. Last week, Sir Paul McCartney played live for the space station astronauts in a direct link from his concert at Anaheim, California. Today the astronauts were celebrating American Thanksgiving with a feast of irradiated smoked turkey, dehydrated green beans, powdered drinks and a thermo-stabilized cranberry-apple dessert.

Asteroids and how to cure them Space experts in London yesterday revealed plans being drawn up to prevent an asteroid impact. Leading scientists presented latest proposals for dealing with a space rock on collision course with Earth. Astronomers have still not ruled out an impact with a Near Earth Object called 99942 Apophis in 2036. That asteroid, which is about 300 yards across, will just miss us on a previous pass in 2029. An Armageddon-style impact by an asteroid a few hundred yards wide could destroy a city and its surroundings or cause a devastating tsunami. The London conference heard that the European Space Agency is designing spacecraft to tackle a rogue asteroid or comet. Options include crashing a spacecraft onto the cosmic wanderer to knock it off course. A similar effect could be caused by exploding a nuclear device near the asteroid. A rocket could be attached to it to steer it on a new path. Or a giant mirror could focus the heat of the sun onto the asteroid to burn off a plume of gas and change its orbit. Most outlandish suggestion at the meeting, sponsored by the European Space Agency, was to play 'cosmic billiards' by colliding a smaller space rock with a bigger, dangerous asteroid that threatened to hit the planet. Professor Colin McInnes, of the University of Strathclyde, said colliding a spacecraft with an asteroid offered the best solution for an imminent threat. He said the key issue was accurate cataloguing of the space rocks that come near us in the solar system. In a surprise move, US astronauts Tom Jones and Rusty Schweickart linked live to the London conference from the States. And Tom revealed that his spaceman chums don't want to fly on an Amageddon movie-style mission like actor Bruce Willis. Instead, he backed a "space tractor" - a spaceship that would pull up alongside an asteroid and tow it away simply by force of gravity. Tom, speaking on behalf of more than 280 international astronauts in exclusive club the Association of Space Explorers, called on world leaders to face up to the challenge of asteroid impacts. He called them "the most devastating of all natural disasters." Meteorite expert Professor Monica Grady of the Open University said major asteroid impacts on Earth happened every 50million years on average - and 65million years had passed since the last one which wiped out the dinosaurs.

Riddle of Einstein's 'blunder' An idea that genius Albert Einstein called his "biggest blunder" may be true after all, astronomers believe. Superbrain Einstein, who drew up the general theory of relativity in 1915, thought he had also found a formula called a "cosmological constant" to help explain how the universe is expanding. But he later retracted it. Now a team including UK astronomers has found that his formula works if they allow for invisible "dark energy" in the universe that Einstein never knew about. They carried out observations of distant supernovae, or exploding stars, using the biggest telescopes on moutaintops around the world, the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics reports. Dr Isobel Hook, of the University of Oxford, said: "So far our results are consistent with Einstein's cosmological constant. Now we know he may have been closer to the truth than he realised."

UK set to go to Moon with China Britain looks set to contribute to a spaceprobe called Chang'e II which could reach the lunar surface in 2010. Under the proposals, a robot rover carrying UK experiments would leave the unmanned craft and run around looking for interesting rocks. Instruments built by astronomers at the University of Leicester would analyse the rocks to work out what they are made of. A follow-up "Chinese takeaway" mission in the next decade will land, collect samples of the moon's crust and fly them back to Earth. The major UK contribution to the Chang'e II mission is an X-ray spectrometer based on a device built for the UK's ill-fated Beagle 2 mission to Mars in 2003. The unique Anglo-Chinese cooperation follows a visit to Beijing by Leicester space scientist Dean Talboys. He met with Chinese astronomers led by Professor Ziyuan Ouyang of Peking University. Dean said that a final decision by China on carrying the UK instruments depends on funding for them being provided by the UK government of European Space Agency. But they need just a tiny fraction of the £45million that Beagle 2 cost. He added: "We are very pleased to be collaborating with our colleagues at Peking University to propose instrumentation for the exploration of the Moon. "We are working together towards having our instrumentation selected as part of the payload for the Chang'e II lunar rover. It is immensely rewarding working with China on this prestigious project at these early stages and we hope to continue this in the future." China, which made its second manned spaceflight last month, plans to send at least one probe to orbit the Moon next year before flying the landers. Chang'e is the name of the Chinese moon goddess. The Leicester Space Research Centre has also developed a torch-sized detector called an X-ray spectrometer for astronauts to carry on the Moon to help them tell immediately what rocks are made of. The device - a miracle of miniaturisation - is also based on one invented for Beagle 2. They are also working on a box of tricks called GEORAD which could act as a future lunar laboratory on a separate mission. Apart from analysing the lunar soil to find rocks from which oxygen could be extracted, it could try to detect ice in the craters near the Moon's poles - vital to provide water and fuel for future manned colonies. And it would measure deadly radiation from the sun and cosmic rays to help ensure that future manned missions provide suitable protection for astronauts. The US has announced its own plans to return to the Moon and land astronauts there by 2018.

No time for change A crackpot bid to scrap leap seconds was put on hold yesterday. Real life time lords in Geneva agreed to a rethink after complaints that it would eventually lead to the sun rising in the AFTERNOON. A US contingent had complained that it was too difficult to adjust precise atomic clocks used by the internet and satellites. But their move threatened the historic time-keeping system set up by Britain in the 17th century and recognised by the world. Leap seconds are currently added to Greenwich Mean Time every 18 months or so to compensate for a gradual slowing down in the Earth's rotation. The next will be on New Year's Eve. It ensures that the sun continues to cross the prime meridian at Greenwich, that divides east and west, at noon. The UK's Royal Astronomical Society had protested over the proposal to the International Telecommunications Union to scrap leap seconds. RAS secretary Dr Mike Hapgood welcomed the decision to re-examine the issue. He told the BBC: "It's what we were seeking, so that's good from our point of view."

Earth radios its own quake alerts Nature broadcasts its own warnings of earthquakes that could help save thousands of lives, scientists reveal today. They have detected pulses of radio waves beamed from the ground days before recent quakes plus similar disturbances in the upper reaches of the atmosphere. The discovery raises the hope that authorities could be given time to arrange evacuations of danger areas before future disasters strike. "There are definitely hints of something happening in the region of earthquakes before the Earth moves," says expert Colin Price, of Tel Aviv University, Israel. Price and colleagues believe the broadcasts happen when stresses deep underground cause rocks containing magnetic particles to fracture, generating ultra-low frequency radio waves. Research groups ar enow tunnelling underground to pick up pulses and using satellites to measure radio disturbances in the ionosphere, 50 to 625 miles above us, New Scientist reports today. Japanese scientists say they detected radio pulses two days before a magnitude 5.5 quake struck a region 80 miles away.

Sunrise, sunset . . . times three More than 1,000 planets in our own neck of the universe have THREE suns, astronomers claim today. They came up with the figure after an observatory in Callifornia announced the discovery of a giant planet in a triple star system in July. The alien solar system, called HD 188753, is about 150 light years from Earth. Now US and Dutch scientists have worked out how a planet can form in a system of three stars - and their results suggest that there are 1,200 such worlds within 1,600 light years of Earth, New Scientist reports today.

Spirit spots eclipse on Mars A Nasa robot rover has sent home photos of an eclipse of the moon - on Mars. Spirit, which has spent nearly two years trundling around on the red planet, snapped its larger moon Phobos as it passed through the shadow of Mars in space. And just like with a lunar eclipse on Earth, 16-mile-wide Phobos gradually dimmed as sunlight was blocked from falling onto its surface. Mars' second moon Deimos is also visible in the original pictures sent back by Spirit from the summit of Husband Hill. (It is not in the cropped image, right).

100 Scousers lost in space One hundred names from Liverpool were lost in space yesterday after a daring bid to land a hopping robot on an asteroid failed. Space scientists lost contact with the tea-caddy sized probe Minerva after it was relased from its £100million mother ship Hayabusa on Saturday. Apart from a 3D camera, it was also carrying an aluminium sheet with the names of 100 Liverpudlians, collected by city asteroid expert Dr Benny Peiser among a million gathered worldwide. Mission control in Japan believes Minerva may have gone into orbit around the asteroid Itokawa because it was released as Hayabusa was moving away from the space rock. The craft has already had problems with its rocket thrusters. Minerva, was meant to hop across the surface of the 600yard long sausage-shaped asteroid after its 620million mile flight from Earth. Japan still hopes to collect samples of the asteroid by brushing Hayabusa alongside it on Saturday and again later this month. Dust and rock they pick up will then be flown home to Earth and parachuted into the Australian outback. Project manager Junichiro Kawaguchi said last night: "Sending Minerva to the surface did not work. "Hayabusa is jerking in an awkward manner, likely due to a malfunction of its positioning control system, but we want to fix that in time for its landing." Dr Peiser, of Liverpool John Moores University, said of the loss of his 100 names: "It's really a shame. I wouldn't be surprised if Sir Alex Ferguson had a hand in this cosmic mishap. "But at least we had another Scouser in space when Paul McCartney sang in the first-ever concert link-up to the space station."

It's time for a rethink British astronomers and historians have got the pip over a US plot to destroy Greenwich Mean Time. They are fighting plans to abolish leap seconds introduced to keep time in line with the stars. The world's real-life Time Lords are meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, this week to debate the issue. The are considering a complaint by American scientists that it is too difficult to adjust precise atomic clocks used by the internet, global positioning systems and satellite launchers. The next leap second will be added to the pips on New Year's Eve - and while it only gives you an extra moment to get over your hangover, experts say it is vital to compensate for a gradual slowing down in the rotation of the Earth. They argue that without them we will eventually see the sun rise in the middle of the afternoon. London's historic Greenwich Observatory was built in the 17th century to keep time by the stars and help sailors find their position at sea. Greenwich's prime meridian dividing the eastern and western hemispheres was confirmed by an international conference in Washington in 1884. Only Paris held out by measuring time from their own meridian but even they fell in line eventually. Astronomers measured the rotation of the Earth by checking the precise moment individual stars passed over the prime meridian. Leap seconds are now added around every 18 months to make sure the sun continues to cross at noon. There have been 21 since 1972. The UK's Royal Astronomical Society are up in arms over the proposal to the International Telecommunications Union in Geneva. Robin Scagell, of the UK's Society for Popular Astronomy said last night: "Astronomers have been working for centuries to keep accurate time by the sun. Now this plan threatens to wreck our daily rhythm and also an historic British institution. "It is a lot easier to make these small time adjustments than to alter the rotation of the Earth! And something like this is too important to be decided by a few people in secret in Geneva."

Star is on the run UK astronomers have clocked a runaway star speeding at an incredible 1.6MILLION miles an hour through space. They believe it was kicked out of the Large Magellanic Cloud - the closest galaxy to our own Milky Way - by a massive black hole. Scientists from the University of Hertfordshire spotted the star with German colleagues from the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, using the European Very Large Telescope in Chile. Astronomer Uli Heber said: "At such a speed, the star would go around the Earth in less than a minute!"

Macca plays live for space station Paul McCartney will become the first rock musician to play live for astronauts in space on Sunday when he provides the wake-up call for the International Space Station. Sir Paul will play Beatles classic Good Day Sunshine and English Tea to the two man crew circling 220 miles above the Earth. His performance for NASA Astronaut Bill McArthur and Russian Cosmonaut Valery Tokarev will come during his concert at Anaheim, California, part of his 11-week US tour. Spacemen have a long tradition of beginning each day with a musical alarm call from Earth. Last August, the record version of Good Day Sunshine" played as a wake-up call for the crew of the shuttle Discovery because of a favourable weather forecast for landing that morning. "I was extremely proud to find out that one of my songs was played for the crew of Discovery this summer," McCartney said last night. "In our concert we hope to repay the favour." Discovery commander Eileen Collins said: "Since people were first awakened on the moon by mission control, wake-up songs have been a space tradition to brighten the crew's day and get them off to a great start. "We're honoured that Paul McCartney will be a part of this historic delivery of music for Bill and Valery. It will surely give them a big boost as they continue through their research mission." McArthur and Tokarev are the 12th crew of the station, which has had a continuous human presence for more than five years. In 1988, Soviet cosmonauts took an advance copy of Pink Floyd's live album The Delicate Sound Of Thunder into orbit with them. The cassette was a gift from the band who were present at the launch of their Soyuz spaceship and it became the first rock music played in space.

Invisible tow for asteroids Two Nasa astronauts have proposed sending space tugs to tow away asteroids so they cannot threaten the Earth. Shuttle spacemen Edward Lu and Stanley Love say a 20-ton rocket could deflect a 200-yard wide rock in about a year just by flying alongside it. They would not need any tow rope - just the gravitational attraction between the two objects would be enough to steer the asteroid off its deadly course. The astronauts' rescue plan, revealed in the magazine Nature, would not help deal with a cosmic rock found just a few months before an impact. Last month, Nasa revealed it is ready to launch an Armegeddon-style missile attack on a quarter-mile-wide rock named Apophis if further studies show that it will slam into the Earth in 2036. An impact by the asteroid would create a crater the size of a city and cause widespread devastation.

Africa's Giant Eye on the sky The biggest telescope in the southern hemisphere will be opened today by South African President Thabo Mbeki at Sutherland, near Cape Town. UK astronomers will be among those using the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) - nicknamed Africa's Giant Eye - which has a light-collecting mirror 11 metres wide. The scientists will be able to operate the telescope over the internet to discover more about the origins of the universe.

Lichen lives on in space Scientists yesterday announced the startling discovery that life can survive in the vacuum of space. Lichen carried into orbit by a European probe called Foton-M2 was exposed to the hostile environment for more than 14 days. It was forced to suffer extreme fluctuations of temperature and constant bombardment of cosmic radiation. But when the samples were returned to Earth the lichen was still alive. The discovery has profound implications for the existence of life on other planets. The research team say their results show that lichen could survive on the surface of Mars. Meteorites blasted out of the Martian surface have already been found on Earth - one showing clear signs of fossils - and astronomers expect similar rocks from Earth to litter the surface of the Red Planet. It means that life could have been carried from one planet to another. Methane gas in the atmosphere of Mars is another indicator that alien organisms clould be living in the planet's soil. The lichen - a mix of algae and fungus that is a more advanced form of life than bacteria - was carried into space in the summer. After being exposed to the vacuum, it was enclosed in a box to protect it from re-entry and the samples were then examined by scientists in the Netherlands. Dr Judith Pillinger, wife of Beagle mastermind Professor Colin Pillinger, was involved in the Foton research. She said last night: "We knew that lichen was hardy but this was a fascinating experiment. It seems to go into a kind of suspended animation. "What we would like to know now is whether lichen could survive entry into the atmosphere if it was on a piece of rock from another planet." Biologists have become increasingly amazed by the extreme conditions in which life can exist on Earth, including volcanic vents.

Comms satellite success A UK-built, six-ton satellite was successfully launched into space yesterday from a converted oil rig. Inmarsat-4, which was assembled in Stevenage and Portsmouth, will boost communications and provide broadband internet for the Americas and remote regions including the Arctic and Antarctic. It was fired into orbit from the Odyssey launch platform in the Pacific after earlier postponements due to a software glitch. The satellite - one of the biggest ever launched - is the size of a London bus and is designed to operate for 15 years. It is the second of three which will cover the Earth.

That old Mars magic People's fascination with the Red Planet was clearly shown last night when more than 600 turned up for a Mars, Meteors and Mulled Wine evening organised by the Science Museum at its Wroughton outpost near Swindown Wilts. The impressive queue for the telescopes to view Mars was only equalled by the long line to collect the bangers and mash supper. Beagle scientist Professor Colin Pillinger got huge applause for his presentation and signed books for the visitors. Despite growing cloud during the day, it cleared enough for Mars to be seen by most present.

Moon is not for sale A Chinese company calling itself the Lunar Embassy has been shut down for selling land on the moon. The interplanetary estate agents said it has sold 49 acres of lunar plots in its first three days at £21 an acre. It offered property ownership including mineral rights - but the Moon is not theirs to own. Chinese authorities shut down the company, based in Beijing.

New Beagles could be bound for Mars Beagle mastermind Colin Pillinger today launched a fresh bid to land a UK probe on Mars and look for life. The mutton-chopped professor said that ideally he would like to send TWO new Beagles into space by the end of the decade - and this time his robots will be a rovers. They will have wheels just like Doctor Who's metal dog K9 so that they can run about on the Red Planet to test for signs of aliens. The professor's first craft, Beagle 2, carried to Mars by Europe's Mars Express mother ship, crashed on Christmas Day 2003. It is thought unusually thin air conditions caused the probe's parachutes to fail. An inquiry criticised the £45million mission for being done too cheaply and in a rush. But it won massive support from the British people. Prof Pillinger told an international meeting of the Mars Society at Swindon, Wilts, that his mission was vital to encourage a new generation of youngsters to take up science - and that was important for bodies like the NHS. This time he wants to send two craft to double his chances of success. And he is ready to link up with Nasa or the Russian space program if it will help get his craft to fly. Prof Pillinger called current European plans for exploring the solar system "a mish-mash." And he said: "It is not beyond the capabilities of the UK to go it alone." He said: "It has go to be a strong dynamic program so that the public who pay for it find it exciting and can believe in going to Mars." The professor, from the Open University, added that methane detected in the Martian atmosphere was indicated the possibility of life. He said: "We have to get back to find out why there is methane on Mars."

Watch out for nature's own fireworks Astronomers yesterday warned night owls to watch out for some extra brilliant fireworks in the sky as the Earth collides with a swarm of space rocks. Scientists are already getting calls from people who have spotted the dazzling fireballs - some as bright as the full moon - streaking into the atmosphere. But they say nature's own firework show is about to get even better. It is happening because the Earth is passing through a stream of comet debris called the Taurids. We run into the meteor swarm every November - but experts say that we are hitting an extra-dense pocket of them this year. They predict the best display will run from tonight (Nov 5th) until next weekend with several brilliant meteors visible an hour. (12th) The fireballs are brighter than ordinary shooting stars because the rocks are the size of pebbles rather than grains of sand, hitting out atmosphere at 65,000mph. Meteor expert David Asher, of the Armagh Observatory in Northern Ireland, said: "They're about the size of pebbles or small stones. It may seem unbelievable that a pebble can produce a fireball as bright as the Moon, but remember, these things hit the atmosphere at very high speed." The fireballs, which can appear in any part of the sky, present no danger to spectators because they burn up before reaching the ground.

Closing in on black hole Scientists have zoomed in on a massive black hole that is gobbling up stars at the centre of our galaxy, they revealed yesterday. They got the most detailed view ever by linking up ten radio telescopes up to 5,000 miles apart to act like one giant instrument. Astronomers from Shanghai in China and the US located the titanic black hole that is pumping out powerful radio waves deep in the Milky Way. They hope to examine it right down to the so-called event horizon - the point beyond which light cannot escape - to test Einstein's theory of general relativity.

Astronomers spot earliest starlight Astronomers have spotted the faint glow of what they believe to be the very first stars created in the universe. They used Nasa's Spitzer space telescope to discover the earliest objects that formed after the Big Bang. They are so far away that the light from the stars has taken more that 13 BILLION YEARS to reach us - and the stars themselves no longer exist. Scientists say the light is from giant stars that burned brilliantly or hot gas falling into the very first black holes. The astronomers pointed the telescope at the constellation of Draco the dragon and had to open their "camera shutter" for TEN HOURS to record the faint starlight. Their leader, Dr Alexander Kashlinsky, from Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Centre at Greenbelt, Maryland, said it was like seeing the glow of a distant city at night from an aircraft. He added: "These were the first objects to form in the universe. The stars disappeared eons ago, yet their light is still travelling across the universe." Scientists say the first stars were more than a hundred times more massive than the sun and extremely hot and bright - but they burned for only a few million years. Caption: The top half of the picture shows the area of Draco imaged by Spitzer and the bottom half is with the stars and galaxies removed and the remaining faint glow. Credit: NASA.

Problem hits asteroid probe A JAPANESE spacecraft was today due to land a probe on an asteroid in the first stage of a mission to bring bits of it back to Earth. The £100million Hayabusa mothership was last night flying alongside its target, a 600-yard long sausage-shaped rock called Itokawa. But early today, an unexplained fault caused mission controllers to cancel the day's action. Hayabusa, which means Falcon in Japanese, was due to release its tea-caddy sized lander Minerva today after a 620million mile journey to the asteroid. Minerva, which weighs only about one pound, should then have touched down then hopped around the asteroid taking 3-D photos and collecting data. Later this month, the amazing unmanned mission is due to get more daring. Hayabusa will move in from its present position less than three miles from Itokawa and move right alongside to brush up against it. On November 12 and then again on the 25th, it will fire pellets into the asteroid's surface, then collect rubble and dust ejected for return to Earth. Hayabusa, which was launched in May 2003, will leave the asteroid in December and begin its long journey back to Earth, parachuting the samples it has collected to a landing in the Australian outback in June 2007. UK space expert Robin Scagell said last night: "If the Japanese pull this off, it will be an incredible feat."

Two new moons for Pluto The Hubble space telescope has discovered TWO new moons around the distant planet Pluto. They were snapped in pictures taken a month apart by the giant eye in the sky. The new moons, which have not yet been named, are each thought to be less than 45 miles wide. Pluto, the ninth planet in the solar system and lying four billion miles from the sun, was already known to have one moon, Charon, which was first spotted in 1978. Pluto is so far away that it takes over 248 YEARS to go round the sun. Nasa's first space mission to the planet is due to launch in January. Caption: The images, right, from Hubble show Pluto and Charon, the two brightest objects, on May 15 (above) and May 18 (below). The two fainter objects are the new moons. Credit: NASA.