Jul 22ndPluto flyby: Meet the ‘King of the Kuiper Belt’

We now like to think of the reconnaissance of Pluto as just the start of something, as the beginning of the exploration of the “third zone”.

If the first and second zones encompass the rocky inner planets like Earth and the outer gas giants like Saturn, then this third sector covers all the smaller bodies like Pluto that orbit billions of km from the Sun. And they are legion.

This third zone, known as the Kuiper Belt, probably contains hundreds of thousands of objects 100km and more across. Pluto, at about 2,300km wide, just happens to be the current “King of Kuiper Belt”.

Read more here.