What is pluto minimum distance from earth?

Answer 1

With due consideration of the high inclination #17.2^o# of Pluto's orbital plane to our ecliptic, the least lower bound for the minimum Earth-Pluto distance is 4.29 B km = 2.66 B miles, nearly.

I have data from the NASA Planetary Fact Sheet.

Pluto : Perihelion = 4.436 billion (B) km and orbital inclination to Earth's orbital plane = #17.2^o#. Earth : Aphelion: 0.1521 B km.

For least possible Earth-Pluto distance,,in the Earth (E) - Sun (S) - Pluto (P) #triangleESP#, SE = Earth aphelion, SP = Pluto perihelion and #angleESP= max 17.2^o#

So, least #EP = sqrt(SP^2+SE^2-2XSEXSPXcosangleESP)#. , This simplifies to 4.29 B km

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Answer 2

Luke Allen

Pluto's minimum distance from Earth is approximately 2.66 billion miles.

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Answer from HIX Tutor

When evaluating a one-sided limit, you need to be careful when a quantity is approaching zero since its sign is different depending on which way it is approaching zero from. Let us look at some examples.