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article last updated October 24, 2019 Pluto—which is smaller than Earth’s Moon—has a heart-shaped glacier that’s the size of Texas and Oklahoma.

Pluto is categorized as a dwarf planet. Marking the anniversary of New Horizons' historic flight through the Pluto system on July 14, 2015, mission scientists have released the most accurate natural color images of Pluto and Charon. In 2006, Pluto was categorized with three other objects in the solar system that are about the same small size as Pluto: Ceres, Makemake and Eris.These objects, along with Pluto, are much smaller than the "other" planets. But since the release of New Horizons images showing a very prominent heart-shaped feature on the surface, the sad Pluto meme has given way to a very content, loving Pluto that would like to once again be visited by a spacecraft.The Disney cartoon character Pluto, Mickey's faithful dog, made his debut in 1930, the same year Tombaugh discovered the dwarf planet. Here are some great shots from its extended mission in the main asteroid belt. The next full Moon will be early Sunday morning, July 5, 2020. NASA's Curiosity Mars rover has started a road trip that will continue through the summer across roughly a mile (1.6 kilometers) of terrain. Pluto is a dwarf planet in our solar system. NASA Portal This site is maintained by the Planetary Science Communications team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Goddard Space Flight Center for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate . And who are its "real" family members? Asteroids, comets, Kuiper Belt Objects—all kinds of small bodies of rock, metal and ice are in constant motion as they orbit the Sun. They are Astronomers have put these objects into a new family called This picture shows the sizes of dwarf planets Pluto, Ceres, Eris, and Makemake as compared to Earth and Earth's moon, here called "Luna."

Astronomers have already named three other objects in the solar system that are about the same small size as Pluto. But either way, the joke connecting the two, as told in the 1987 Mel Brooks film an area full of icy bodies and other dwarf planets out past Neptune. A day on Pluto lasts 153 hours, or about 6 Earth days.Pluto has a thin atmosphere of nitrogen, methane and carbon monoxide. Charon is named for the river Styx boatman who ferries souls in the underworld (as well as honoring Sharon, the wife of discoverer James Christy); Nix is named for the mother of Charon, who is also the goddess of darkness and night; Hydra is named for the nine-headed serpent that guards the underworld; Kerberos is named after the three-headed dog of Greek mythology (and called Fluffy in the Harry Potter novels); and Styx is named for the mythological river that separates the world of the living from the realm of the dead.Pluto's place in mythology can get a little muddled, so we asked Dr. Elizabeth Vandiver, chair of the Department of Classics in Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, to clarify the origins of the name: "Pluto is the name of the Roman god of the Underworld, equivalent to the Greek Hades. Since 2006, per the International Astronomical Union’s planetary criteria, Pluto isn’t considered a planet because it hasn’t cleared the neighborhood around its orbit of other objects. Meet the women leading two of humankind's two most distant space missions. The largest, Charon, is so big that Pluto and Charon orbit each other like a double planet.The only spacecraft to visit Pluto is NASA’s New Horizons, which passed close by in July 2015.Pluto’s surface is far too cold, -378 to -396 degrees F (-228 to -238 C), to sustain life as we know it.Venetia Burney, just 11 years old at the time, suggested the name Pluto in 1930.Pluto is the only world (so far) named by an 11-year-old girl. This fascinating world has blue skies, spinning moons, mountains as high as the Rockies, and it snows—but the snow is red.“The complexity of the Pluto system — from its geology to its satellite system to its atmosphere— has been beyond our wildest imagination,” said Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. This site is among seven NASA sites nominated this year for a Webby. NASA's Dawn spacecraft has gone silent, ending a historic mission that studied time capsules from the solar system's earliest chapter. Pluto is categorized as a dwarf planet. We finally got to visit Pluto, Charon, and the Kuiper Belt! July 14, 2017: On July 14, 2015, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft made its historic flight through the Pluto system – providing the first close-up images of Pluto and its moons and collecting other data that has transformed our understanding of these mysterious worlds on the solar system’s outer frontier.Scientists are still analyzing and uncovering dat… Using insights from the Dawn mission, scientists pursue clues to Ceres’ secrets by simulating its conditions on Earth.

There is speculation that Walt Disney named the animated dog after the recently discovered planet to capitalize on its popularity, but other accounts are less certain of a direct link. Scientists are still analyzing and uncovering data that New Horizons recorded and sent home after the encounter. This mission is called But not any more. NASA's Dawn spacecraft has gone silent, ending a historic mission that studied time capsules from the solar system's earliest chapter.