Pluto 

(minor-planet designation: 134340 Pluto) is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt, a ring of bodies

beyond the orbit of Neptune. It is the ninth-largest and tenth-most-massive known object to directly
orbit the Sun. It is the largest known trans-Neptunian object by volume, by a small margin, but is
slightly less massive than Eris. Like other Kuiper belt objects, Pluto is made primarily of ice and rock
and is much smaller than the inner planets. Compared to Earth's moon, Pluto has only one sixth its
mass and one third its volume.
Pluto has a moderately eccentric and inclined orbit, ranging from 30 to 49 astronomical units (4.5 to
7.3 billion kilometers; 2.8 to 4.6 billion miles) from the Sun. Light from the Sun takes 5.5 hours to
reach Pluto at its average distance (39.5 AU [5.91 billion km; 3.67 billion mi]). Pluto's eccentric orbit
periodically brings it closer to the Sun than Neptune, but a stable orbital resonance prevents them
from colliding.
Pluto has five known moons: Charon, the largest, whose diameter is just over half that of
Pluto; Styx; Nix; Kerberos; and Hydra. Pluto and Charon are sometimes considered a binary
system because the barycenter of their orbits does not lie within either body, and they are tidally
locked. The New Horizons mission was the first spacecraft to visit Pluto and its moons, making
a flyby on July 14, 2015 and taking detailed measurements and observations.
Pluto was discovered in 1930, the first object in the Kuiper belt. It was immediately hailed as
the ninth planet, but its planetary status was questioned when it was found to be much smaller than
expected. These doubts increased following the discovery of additional objects in the Kuiper belt
starting in the 1990s, and particularly the more massive scattered disk object Eris in 2005. In 2006
the International Astronomical Union (IAU) formally redefined the term planet to exclude dwarf
planets such as Pluto. Many planetary astronomers, however, continue to consider Pluto and other
dwarf planets to be planets.