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At perihelion, Sedna is only 55% further than Pluto's aphelion. As of January 2024, Sedna is near perihelion, 83.55 AU (12.50 billion km) from the Sun, [15] and 2.8 times farther away than Neptune. The dwarf planets Eris and Gonggong are presently farther away from the Sun than Sedna.
In November 2010, after completing its primary mission to non-near-Earth comet Tempel 1, the NASA probe Deep Impact flew by the near-Earth comet 103P/Hartley. [ 14 ] In August 2014, ESA probe Rosetta began orbiting near-Earth comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko , while its lander Philae landed on its surface in November 2014.
One particularly distant body is 90377 Sedna, which was discovered in November 2003.It has an extremely eccentric orbit that takes it to an aphelion of 937 AU. [2] It takes over 10,000 years to orbit, and during the next 50 years it will slowly move closer to the Sun as it comes to perihelion at a distance of 76 AU from the Sun. [3] Sedna is the largest known sednoid, a class of objects that ...
According to the IAU's explicit count, there are eight planets in the Solar System; four terrestrial planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars) and four giant planets, which can be divided further into two gas giants (Jupiter and Saturn) and two ice giants (Uranus and Neptune). When excluding the Sun, the four giant planets account for more than ...
Following the discovery of Leleākūhonua, Sheppard et al. concluded that it implies a population of about 2 million inner Oort cloud objects larger than 40 km (25 mi), with a combined total mass of 1 × 10 22 kg, about the mass of Pluto (a fraction the mass of Earth's moon but several times the mass of the asteroid belt).
The following is a list of numbered minor planets (essentially the same as asteroids) in ascending numerical order. Minor planets are defined as small bodies in the Solar System, including asteroids, distant objects, and dwarf planets, but not including comets. The catalog consists of hundreds of pages, each containing 1,000 minor planets.
A dwarf planet is a small planetary-mass object that is in direct orbit around the Sun, massive enough to be gravitationally rounded, but insufficient to achieve orbital dominance like the eight classical planets of the Solar System.
NASA: N/A: Lander: A probe designed to land on Pluto, similar to the proposed Triton Hopper mission. N/A [19] Mariner Mark II: NASA: N/A [a] N/A [a] Proposed family of spacecraft intended to explore dwarf planets and trans-Neptunian objects, later replaced by the lower-cost Discovery Program. N/A: N/A New Horizons 2: NASA: N/A: Flyby