One of the most anticipated discoveries of New Horizons' historic mission to Pluto has been to determine for once and for all the dwarf planet's size.
According to the Washington Post, a team of researchers at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory revealed Pluto's size with greater certainty than ever achieved at a news conference Monday.
The researchers said Pluto's diameter is about 1,472.6 miles, with a margin of error some 12 miles. The new measurement is just one mile larger than what was previously accepted, but it has significant ramifications for Pluto's density regardless.
"The size of Pluto has been debated since its discovery in 1930. We are excited to finally lay this question to rest," Bill McKinnon, a New Horizons mission scientists at Washington University in St. Louis, said in a press release.
Not up for debate is Pluto's density, meaning a larger diameter would lower the dwarf planet's density and therefore be more heavily composed of ice than it is of rock the Post reported.
Pluto's status as a dwarf planet is unchanged, but it is the largest object in the Kuiper Belt, which is just beyond the orbit of Neptune, the solar system's outermost planet. Given that Pluto has remained a mystery so long after its discovery, New Horizons could theoretically make new discoveries about some of its neighbors, the Post noted.
"We knew from the time we designed our flyby that we would only be able to study the small moons in detail for just a few days before closest approach," Alan Stern, New Horizons' principal investigator at the Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colo., said in the release "Now, deep inside Pluto's sphere of influence, that time has come."
After nine-and-a-half years journeying through space, New Horizons will make its awaited flyby with Pluto on Tuesday morning.
