9 Things The New Horizon Probe Has Taught Us About Pluto
8. Its Bigger Than We Thought
The mission allowed us to establish once and for all whether Pluto was indeed the biggest object in the Kuiper Belt. The discovery if another dwarf planet named Eris had a role to play in the demotion of Pluto from a planet to a dwarf planet and has since been dubbed as the "Pluto Killer" by many scientists. The New Horizons mission has bumped Pluto's numbers up another 50 miles or so, bringing it to a total diameter of 1,473 miles, but, strangely, Eris actually has much more mass.
This is exciting in a number of ways as it confirms that Pluto is still "King of the Kuiper Belt", but has also highlighted Eris as another fascinating world to explore in its own right. Perhaps we'll send another mission out in the coming nine years to explore the dwarf planet that knocked Pluto off its planetary pedestal.