Nasa to make 'amazing' announcement about Pluto on 8 October

That was the main thing that Stern said, and the office has generally stayed tight-lipped about its declaration.

And if Dr Alan Stern's comments to a packed hall at the University of Alberta in Canada are anything to go by, we might very well be talking about alien life forms.

"Nasa won't let me tell you what we're going to tell you on Thursday", he said during the speech.

"It has weather, it has hazes in the atmosphere, active geology". "Every week I am floored". More often than not, Nasa trails its enormous declarations and hosts them live on its Nasa TV channel.

It's unlikely that the craft will be able to reveal life on the dwarf planet - as with Mars, any life there is nearly certainly microbial, and so would need something to actually be on the planet to be sure.

[Photo by NASA / Getty Images News]Both Pluto and Charon have received a lot of press lately, as their terrains have revealed unexpected features that have changed the way each is looked at.

Therefore, whatever the big announcement is, it may only be the beginning of exciting news surrounding Pluto and its moon, Charon.

It's been a good year already for Nasa, which as well as breaking the news about finding flowing water on the Red Planet, also announced the discovery of dwarf planet Kepler 452b - otherwise known as Earth 2.0 because of its similarities to home.

It is not clear exactly how the cofusion arose as Dr Stern had previously retweeted an article inluding the quotes he was alleged to have made.