Welcome to You Ask Andy

Judy Rowe, age 9, of Omaha, Nebraska, for her question:

Could Pluto be a satellite?

A planet orbits around the sun. A satellite orbits around a planet while both of them travel around the sun together. Our moon is a captive satellite of the planet earth. Little Pluto pedals around the sun all by itself, way out there near the edge of the Solar System. This means that Pluto is really a planet and not a satellite that belongs to another planet.

Pluto's neighbor is the big planet Neptune. Some experts think Pluto once might have been one of Neptune's moons    or that Neptune may capture it someday in the future. Once in a great while, these two outside planets come very close to each other. If ever they come too close, Pluto may be captured by the pull of Neptune's gravity and become a satellite. But this may never happen. And at present, Pluto is certainly a  minor planet.

 

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