Pluto

Pluto and its largest moon Charon.

**Location:** Milky Way Galaxy/Local Cavity/Solar System

**World Category:** Frozen World

**Pluto** is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt, a ring of bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune. After Pluto was discovered in 1930, it was declared to be the ninth planet from the Sun. Beginning in the 1990s, its status as a planet was questioned following the discovery of several objects of similar size in the Kuiper belt, including the dwarf planet Eris. This led the International Astronomical Union in 2006 to formally define the term "planet", excluding Pluto and reclassifying it as a dwarf planet.

Pluto is the ninth-largest and tenth-most-massive known object directly orbiting the Sun. Pluto is primarily made of ice and rock and is relatively small. Its orbital distance to the Sun is 39.5 AU so the Light from the Sun takes 5.5 hours to reach Pluto.

The first spacecraft to arrive to Pluto was *New Horizons* which performed a flyby on July 14, 2015. Many spacecrafts studied the dwarf planet and its moons, but the first landing on Pluto was conducted in 2203 by Autonomous Government of Uranus with the goal to colonize it. Today, Pluto is a military world for AGU.

## Planetary Properties

### Physical Characteristics

The plains on Pluto's surface are composed of more than 98 percent Nitrogen ice, with traces of Methane and Carbon Monoxide. Nitrogen and Carbon Monoxide are most abundant on the anti-Charon face of Pluto. The mountains are made of water ice. Pluto's surface is quite varied, with large differences in both brightness and color. Pluto is one of the most contrastive bodies in the Solar System, with as much contrast as Saturn's moon Iapetus. The color varies from charcoal black, to dark orange and white. Pluto's color is more similar to that of Io with slightly more orange and significantly less red than Mars.

### Atmosphere

Pluto has a tenuous atmosphere consisting of Nitrogen, Methane, and Carbon Monoxide, which are in equilibrium with their ices on Pluto's surface. The surface pressure is roughly 100,000 times less than Earth's atmospheric pressure. Pluto's surface temperature can lead to exponential increases in Pluto's atmospheric density up to three times that of Mars to a quarter that of the Earth. At such densities, Nitrogen flow across the surface as liquid.

### Natural Satellites

Pluto has five known moons. The largest one, Charon, was first identified in 1978 by astronomer James Christy. Charon's mass is sufficient to cause the barycenter of the Pluto–Charon system to be outside Pluto. Beyond Charon there are four much smaller moons. In order of distance from Pluto they are Styx, Nix, Kerberos, and Hydra. Nix and Hydra were both discovered in 2005, Kerberos was discovered in 2011, and Styx was discovered in 2012.

## Life on Pluto

In 2210, Scientists form Uranus Herschel University conducted a project to search for any sign of life on Pluto. By using newly developed advanced scanners, intense large quantities of bio-signatures gasses was discovered 100 km deep inside Pluto's crust. Expeditions into depths this deep is impossible, but these bio-signatures still exist to this day. Many scientists believe that a diverse ecosystem exist deep inside Pluto.

## Colonization

Similar to Neptune, EUSI intelligence suggested that colonization of Pluto by the Imperium is imminent. Pluto had never been the attention of Earth even after Humans began colonizing other star systems, but fear of an Imperium expansion rushed AGU to establish a small colony and therefor lay claim to the body. Today, Pluto is a military listening post for the Federation.