14 DAY TRIAL // In a new video that's only 60 seconds long, scientists at NASA explain the features that make a celestial body a dwarf planet.
Mind you, NASA didn't produce this short animation just for kicks. Au contraire, the video was released just as the agency's New Horizons spacecraft is nearing the Pluto system.
For many years, Pluto was considered one of the planets in our Solar System. A teeny tiny planet, but a planet nonetheless.
In 2006, however, it was reclassified as a dwarf planet. As explained in the NASA video below, this happened because Pluto was found to have not yet cleared its orbit.
Earth and all the other planets in the Solar System don't have to worry about bumping into other bodies as they orbit the Sun.
Pluto, however, shares its cosmic highway with many other objects, including asteroids. For this reason, it cannot be considered a proper planet, scientists say.
Although tiny Pluto is by far the most popular of the bunch, several other dwarf planets have recently been discovered.
In fact, it was earlier this year that NASA's Dawn spacecraft reached one such celestial body, named Ceres, and successfully placed itself in its orbit.
Astronomers expect that, as more space exploration missions are launched in the years to come, more dwarf planets will be documented in the Solar System.
