WASHINGTON. Pluto, the planet classless, has an atmosphere of nitrogen and is composed primarily of rock and ice. Here are the top 11 features that are known from dwarf planet
1. The celestial body was discovered by the American astronomer Clyde Tombaugh in 1930, when he won the title of the farthest planet in the solar system.
2. In 2006, the International Astronomical Union withdrew this status because of its small size. Since then, Pluto is a dwarf planet and the solar system has eight planets.
3. With a diameter of about 2,370 km, Pluto is much smaller than the Moon, with a diameter of 3,474 km.
4. Pluto’s mass is 500 times smaller than the Earth. It is made of rock and ice of methane, but also contains water ice.
5. For now, the pioneering mission NASA has been able to confirm the existence of polar ice and found Pluto escaping nitrogen atmosphere.
6. The dwarf planet meets once around the Sun every 247.7 Earth years.
7. One day on Pluto lasts six Earth days, that is 153 hours.
8. The planet has five moons. The largest, Charon, will also be studied closely by NASA spacecraft.
9. New Horizons was launched in 2006 from Cape Canaveral, Florida, for a journey of almost 10 years and 5,000 million kilometers.
10. Once the probe has reached its monitoring mission of Pluto and Charon, he could continue his journey to get close to other objects in the Kuiper Belt, the great mass of rubble that remained after the birth of the solar system 4,600 million years ago.
11. Scientists consider Pluto system as a fossil of the early solar system. Research is expected to provide some light on how the neighborhood surrounding the Sun formed
. Source: AFP
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