As NASA's New Horizons reaches its rendezvous point with Pluto, the probe has already captured a first glimpse of its two hidden moons from a total of five moons. Scientists also believe that there could be more moons aside from these known five when New Horizons reach the dwarf planet this July.

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According to John Spencer from the Southwest Research Institute in Colorado, New Horizons is also on the brink of new discoveries, when the spacecraft observes emerging new moons when it gets closer to Pluto, this can only mean that there will be worlds that nobody has ever seen before. 

These two moons are Kerberos and Styx which were discovered in 2011 and 2012 that have been detected by the Hubble Space Telescope.

Styx orbits Pluto for 20 days that is located between Nix and Charon, Pluto's giant moon. Astronomers believe that Styx is just about four to 14 miles in diameter. On the other hand, Kerberos orbits Pluto for 32 days which is located between Nix and Hydra and estimated to measure some six to 20 miles in diameter.

These images that are transmitted back to NASA mission control will now help scientists explore new methods and refine their observing techniques in order to analyze data being sent from the dwarf planet.

The images were captured by New Horizons' ultra sensitive camera called the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) between April 25 and May 1.

Each of these observations involve five 10 second exposures that are created together to form a composite image. In some frames, the two moons were more visible than the others however, they were identified by scientists by confirming their exact positions as they were previously predicted.

According to Alan Stern who is the principal investigator for New Horizons, this discovery of tiny moons spanning 55 million miles is continuing to prove to be an amazing milestone, thanks to the team from the LORRI long-range camera and the rest of the mission team.

TagsPluto, NASA, New Horizons, Pluto moons