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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.
Luna Linea is a dark linear feature (linea) on the dwarf planet Pluto. It was discovered by the New Horizons craft in July 2015 and named after the Luna program, a Soviet space exploration program that was the first to visit the Moon. The name was officially approved by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) on 11 April 2023. [1]
This was the last major planet orbit crossing before the Pluto flyby. At the time, the spacecraft was 3.99 billion km (2.48 billion mi; 26.7 AU) away from Neptune and 4.51 billion km (2.80 billion mi; 30.1 AU) from the Sun.
It is about half the diameter and an eighth the mass of Pluto, a dwarf planet that resides in a frigid region of the outer Solar System called the Kuiper Belt, beyond the most distant planet Neptune.
RM: So the spacecraft travels three billion miles to get to Pluto, and you have this very short window of time when it’s going to fly by the planet. And 10 days before that window is due to start, the spacecraft goes silent. AB: That was a terrible feeling. We were sending commands to the main computer on the spacecraft.
Since Pluto's reclassification as a dwarf planet in 2006 by the International Astronomical Union (IAU), space exploration has increasingly focused on these celestial bodies. In 2015 significant milestones in dwarf planet exploration were reached with the flybys of Pluto and Ceres by the New Horizons and Dawn spacecraft. [1] [2]
NASA has released the 'first and best' images the New Horizons spacecraft was able to take of Pluto during its flyby of the dwarf planet in July. This is what Pluto looks like, up close Skip to ...
Piccard Mons is a large, roughly circular mountain and likely cryovolcano on the dwarf planet Pluto. Discovered by the New Horizons spacecraft in 2015, it is located southeast of Wright Mons within the Tombaugh Regio , adjacent to the Safronov Regio and Elcano Montes.