NASA chief Jared Isaacman wants to return Pluto to its former glory.
In 2006, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) Pluto was stripped of its planethoodThe icy world was reclassified as a “dwarf planet”. The decision was controversial, and not just because it forced schoolchildren around the world to learn a new mnemonic for our solar system’s major inhabitants.
The IAU defines a planet according to three new explicit criteria: It must be orbited by SunIt should be large enough to be circular, and its orbit should be cleared of debris. According to the IAU, Pluto lagged behind in the third calculation, as it shares space with the distant kuiper belt Along with many other dwarf planets. But Earth shares orbital space with a lot of asteroids, as proponents of Jupiter, the Pluto-planet, note. So why was Pluto left out?
We now know that such defenders of Pluto include Isaacman, a billionaire private astronaut and tech entrepreneur who became NASA chief This past December.
Isaacman testified today (April 28) before the U.S. Senate Committee on Appropriations about the White House’s 2027 NASA budget request. at the very end of hearingRepublican Senator Jerry Moran asked the NASA Administrator for his thoughts on Pluto, noting that Tombaugh was from Moran’s home state of Kansas.
Isaacman replied, “Senator, I am in favor of ‘making Pluto a planet again.'”
The NASA chief said, “And I will say, we are doing some papers right now on, I think, a position that we would love to push through the scientific community to revisit this discussion and make sure that Clyde Tombaugh gets the credit that he once got and deserves to get again.”
As those words indicate, NASA (or any Pluto supporter) can move the discussion forward on this matter. The final decision on Pluto’s status depends on iauA global society of professional astronomers that defines celestial objects and assigns official names to them and their surface features.
A significant increase occurred in July 2015, when NASA’s new Horizon The spacecraft returned the first-ever close-up image of Pluto. Those photos revealed an astonishingly diverse world with high mountains, vast nitrogen-ice glaciers and other striking features, including the now-famous heart-shaped landform that mission scientists have dubbed “The Heart of the Earth.” Tombaugh Regio.
New Horizons’ historic flight was not enough to restore planethood to Pluto. Will things be different now that the head of NASA is so openly fascinated by far-flung worlds? We will have to wait and see.
