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Russia is smaller than Pluto, as the surface area covered by Russia is roughly 17.1 million km² whereas Pluto’s surface area is estimated to be slightly more (particularly after the New Horizons mission) with an overall surface area of 17.6 million km².
In the past before the New Horizon mission, Pluto was estimated to be slightly smaller with a surface of area of roughly 16.7 million km². But, since the spacecraft’s fly by in July 2015, the numbers were reworked as being more than initially analyzed.
How Big Is Russia?
Based purely on surface area Russia has the most surface area amongst every country in our solar system, which is more than a large a variety moons across our solar system, the likes of which includes Pluto’s largest moon Charon, Uranus’ moon Titania among numerous others.
From east to west Russia encompasses roughly 9,000km, with the entire surface area of the country adding up to roughly 17.1 million km². The end to end length of Russia is more the double that of the moon and 4 times the diameter of Pluto.
Russia also has 2 mountain ranges, which are the Ural Mountains and the Caucasus Mountains which make up a large portion of the countries surface area.
The Ural mountains have a surface area of 2.225 million km² with the overall end to end range of the mountains roughly 2,500km. The northern region of these mountains have mountains that average peaks of around 1,000m so it’s not necessarily the tallest regions in the world but still very tall nonetheless.
As for the Cacasus Mountains, they are far smaller with a surface area of 477,488 km² with the largest mountain in the region called Mount Elbrus with a peak of 5,642m.
in regards to the depth of Russia’s crust, that is estimated to be 37km on average.
All of these factors, such as the height of the mountains, to the end to end distance from east to west and thickness of he countries crust add up to make Russia the literal biggest country on Earth and bigger than a fair share of moons that orbit the other planets in our solar system.
How Big Is The Dwarf Planet Pluto?
Even though Pluto is a planet, which would have most individuals automatically assume it to be bigger than the countries or even continents on Earth but, this obviously is not the case.
For the longest time it was assumed that Pluto, the now officially recognized dwarf planet, had a surface area smaller than that of Russia.
The previous surface area was estimated to be 16.7 million km² but the New Horizons mission, which observed the planet in more detail than even before, came to a more accurate calculation of the dwarf entities surface area to be 17.6 million km².
Pluto does not have a excessive number of mountains on its surface nevertheless, some of its ice capped mountains are rather tall with heights reaching 3.55km.
In regards to the planets overall thickness, if we were to go from end, where Pluto’s diameter is 2,376.6km, it would be many times the thickness of every country within Earth, whether it be Russia, Canada, the United States and so on.
All in all, even if purely based on surface area Pluto is similar to that of the largest planets on Earth and possibly even smaller than some of the continents on our blue sphere however, when thickness comes into play, Pluto blows all of them out of the water.
Summary
Pluto is slight larger than Russia when it comes to surface area where it is roughly 400,000 km² more and this is without taking into account the thickness and the overall composition of the planet that would make it many times bigger
The spherical shape of planet can be deceiving in terms of how large the planet would be, where it would be exponentially larger if Pluto’s entire body were to be laid flat with a crust thickness of 37km like Russia.
