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Pluto (minor-planet designation: 134340 Pluto) is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt, a ring of bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune. It is the ninth-largest and tenth-most-massive known object to directly orbit the Sun. It is the largest known trans-Neptunian object by volume, by a small margin, but is less massive than Eris.
- 4.743 km/s
- Clyde W. Tombaugh
- February 18, 1930
- Lowell Observatory
Pluto is a dwarf planet that was once our ninth planet, but was reclassified in 2006. Learn about its discovery, exploration, features, and more from NASA's official website.
Pluto is a small, icy world with five moons, including the giant Charon. It was reclassified as a dwarf planet in 2006 and orbits the Sun in a tilted and elliptical path.
- Pluto has a “heart,” and it drives activity on the planet. Sometimes you just have to follow your heart, and Pluto seems to have taken that advice quite literally.
- There’s probably a vast, liquid, water ocean sloshing beneath Pluto’s surface. Gathered ices may not be the only thing that helped reorient Sputnik Planitia.
- Pluto may still be tectonically active because that liquid ocean is still liquid. Enormous faults stretch for hundreds of miles and cut roughly 2.5 miles into the icy crust covering Pluto’s surface.
- Pluto was—and still may be—volcanically active. But maybe not “volcanic” in the way you might think. On Earth, molten lava spits, drools, bubbles, and erupts from underwater fissures through volcanoes sitting miles high in and protruding from the oceans, like on Hawaii.
Pluto is a small, icy world with five moons, including the giant Charon. It was reclassified as a dwarf planet in 2006 and orbits the Sun in a tilted and elliptical path.
Learn about Pluto, the dwarf planet in the Kuiper Belt, and its moon Charon. Find out why Pluto is not a planet, how it orbits the Sun, and what NASA's New Horizons spacecraft discovered there.
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.
