For Pluto Team, It’s a Goofy Debate

Well, is it or isn’t it?

Only the Pluto Express space exploration mission, still on the “pre-project” drawing board at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, presents the chance of putting this question to rest.

The question, driven into the high gear of public debate by last week’s release of Hubble Space Telescope photographs, is whether Pluto is actually a planet. Some scientists contend that the object is more like a comet. But for the pre-project officials and planetary scientists at JPL, the debate is small potatoes. It’s definitely a planet, they argue, and they have answers to the inevitable questions. Why should we care? Why are some of the finest minds in the nation occupied with the exploration of an “icy misfit” 3 billion miles away? Why is it worth a moment of attention during such a volatile week of national and international events?

Well, it is a radically different object, far removed from the smaller, close-in terrestrial planets, such as our own, and the gaseous giants in between. Perhaps it is a chunk of the raw material that formed the planets. As such, it could hold the key to the understanding of our origins. It might answer the question of whether our solar system is unique.

In terms of human endeavor, it is a landmark, a watershed. Pluto is the frontier, the last unexplored planet in our solar system. Developing, and perhaps even inventing, the technology that will take us there, should reap immense educational and inspirational benefits.