Drag to rotate
The beloved dwarf planet
Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet in 2006 but remains one of the most fascinating objects in our solar system. Located in the Kuiper Belt, Pluto has a heart-shaped nitrogen ice glacier (Tombaugh Regio) that was revealed in stunning detail by NASA's New Horizons flyby in 2015. Pluto has five known moons, with Charon being so large relative to Pluto that the two are sometimes considered a binary system. The pair are tidally locked, always showing the same face to each other. Pluto's thin atmosphere expands and collapses as it moves closer to and farther from the Sun in its highly elliptical orbit.
Day Length
153.3h
6.4x Earth days
Year Length
90,560d
247.94x Earth years
Avg Temperature
-229°C
-240° to -218°C
Moons
5
No rings
No Solid Surface
Radius
1,188.3 km
Mass
1.303 x 10^22
Surface Gravity
0.62 m/s²
Escape Velocity
1.21 km/s
Rotation Speed
47.18 km/h
Orbital Speed
4.67 km/s
Distance from Sun
5.9 billion
Composition
Ice and rock, nitrogen ice surface
Instant death from cold and vacuum
There is no solid surface to stand on. No breathable oxygen. Extreme cold of -229°C would freeze you instantly.
Pluto's heart-shaped feature (Tombaugh Regio) is larger than Texas
Pluto and Charon are tidally locked to each other
Pluto's orbit is so elliptical it sometimes comes closer to the Sun than Neptune
New Horizons took 9.5 years to reach Pluto, travelling at 58,000 km/h