Search results
In Depth. Pluto is a complex and mysterious world with mountains, valleys, plains, craters, and maybe glaciers. Discovered in 1930, Pluto was long considered our solar system's ninth planet. But after the discovery of similar intriguing worlds deeper in the distant Kuiper Belt, icy Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet.
Apr 27, 2024 · Pluto, large, distant member of the solar system that formerly was regarded as the outermost and smallest planet. In 2006 a group of experts in the scientific community voted to give Pluto the new classification of dwarf planet. Learn more about Pluto in this article.
4 days ago · Pluto is a dwarf planet that lies in the Kuiper [KI-per] Belt. It's an area full of icy bodies and other dwarf planets at the edge of our solar system. Pluto is known as the "King of the Kuiper Belt" – and it's the largest object in the region, even though another object similar in size, called Eris, has a slightly higher mass. One thing is ...
Jul 14, 2020 · Jul 14, 2020. Article. Five years ago today, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft made history. After a voyage of nearly 10 years and more than 3 billion miles, the intrepid piano-sized probe flew within 7,800 miles of Pluto. For the first time ever, we saw the surface of this distant world in spectacular, colored detail.
Jul 14, 2015 · New Horizons’ flyby of the dwarf planet and its five known moons is providing an up-close introduction to the solar system’s Kuiper Belt, an outer region populated by icy objects ranging in size from boulders to dwarf planets. Kuiper Belt objects, such as Pluto, preserve evidence about the early formation of the solar system.
Jul 6, 2015 · NASA. Jul 06, 2015. Image Article. The most recent high-resolution views of Pluto sent by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft. These are the most recent high-resolution views of Pluto sent by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, including one showing the four mysterious dark spots on Pluto that have captured the imagination of the world.
It is a frigid world, billions of kilometres from the Sun, and 30 times less massive than the then-smallest known planet, Mercury. But Pluto is not alone: its five satellites were later discovered. The largest, Charon, was discovered in 1978 (Buie et al., 2006).
