NASA are pretty pleased with themselves at the moment and they damn well should be, given that they have managed to pilot the New Horizons probe to within about 13 000 km of Pluto’s surface and snap some pics of the dwarf planet (or planet, depending on who you ask).

Why is getting within 13 000 km considered a success? Consider that the New Horizons probe travelled almost five billion km at a speed of around 55 000 km/h for over nine years to reach that point. The reaction from the probe control centre pretty much says it all…

So what do we know about Pluto and what interesting titbits can we arm you with this Thursday? The facts below are plucked from Space Facts and Random History:

The dwarf planet Pluto is named for the ancient Roman god of the underworld. In Roman mythology, Pluto was the son of Saturn who, with his three brothers, controlled the world: Jupiter controlled the sky, Neptune controlled the sea, and Pluto ruled the underworld.

Pluto was reclassified from a planet to a dwarf planet in 2006. This is when the IAU formalised the definition of a planet as “A planet is a celestial body that (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (c) has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit.”

When Pluto was considered a planet, it was the coldest of all the planets. Temperatures on Pluto can range from -240°  to -218° C. The average temperature on Pluto is -229° C. The hottest recorded temperature on Earth was 70.7° C  in the Lut Desert in Iran. The coldest temperature recorded on Earth was -89.2° C  in Antarctica.

Pluto is one third water. This is in the form of water ice which is more than 3 times as much water as in all the Earth’s oceans, the remaining two thirds are rock.

It takes Pluto 6 days, 9 hours, and 17 minutes to spin once, making it the planet with the second-slowest rotation in the solar system. Venus has the slowest rotation, taking 243 days to spin just once. Jupiter is the fastest-spinning planet, rotating on average once in just less than 10 hours.

Pluto spins in the opposite direction as Earth, which means the sun rises in the west and sets in the east. Only Venus, Uranus, and Pluto have a retrograde rotation.

A person who weighs 45kg on Earth would weigh the least on Pluto than on any other planet, at 3kg. on Pluto.

Attempting to view Pluto from Earth is like trying to see a walnut from 48 km away

When Pluto was discovered in 1930, many people wrote in suggesting names for the new planet. Some suggestions were Cronus, Persephone, Erebus, Atlas, and Prometheus. Eleven-year-old Venetia Burney suggested the name Pluto. She thought it would be a good name since Pluto is so dark and far away, like the god of the underworld. On May 1, 1930, the name Pluto became official, and the little girl received a £5 note as a reward.

It takes about five hours for sunlight to reach Pluto. It takes eight minutes to reach Earth.

Look at you go, full of fun facts for your work colleagues today. We’ll leave you with the most close-up image us humans have ever captured. Bit of a looker isn’t she?

[sources:spacefacts&randomhistory]