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Space

Pluto and the largest moon of Neptune might be siblings

The chemical composition of Pluto and Triton suggests they originated in the same region of the outer solar system before the latter was pulled into Neptune’s orbit

By Jonathan O’Callaghan

18 June 2024

Triton, left, and Pluto (not shown to scale) may be long-lost siblings

JPL/NASA//Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

Neptune’s largest moon, Triton, and the dwarf planet Pluto may have shared a common origin before being separated in the early solar system, an analysis of their composition suggests.

Triton and Pluto have both been visited once by spacecraft, the former by NASA’s passing Voyager 2 in 1989 and the latter by NASA’s New Horizons probe in 2015. Both are icy bodies smaller than Earth’s moon with similar densities that appear to have hosted subsurface oceans at some point…

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