NASA’s New Horizons craft has been travelling for 9 years and will be arriving tomorrow (7/14/15) at Pluto! NH will just be doing a fly by before it heads further out into the Kuiper Belt. Int he mean time, we have been getting some WONDERFUL shots of Pluto, and finally figuring out he has a bit of a reddish color (previously I colored him purple in the comic. That’s changed now).
This is super exciting and I hope you are all watching New Horizons as closely as I am!
Today, July 11th 2012, scientists announced the discovery of a fifth moon orbiting Pluto. We all know that the great Neil deGrasse Tyson “killed” Pluto (or was, at least, an accomplice), and the amount of moons a celestial object is nor a deciding factor in when deciding if it’s a planet or not. As an example, Earth has one moon, Saturn has around 60 moons and Venus has none. The truth is that Pluto hasn’t cleared its orbit yet, meaning that it shares its orbit with other bodies and isn’t the dominant body in that orbit.
Poor Pluto is so desperate to regain his old title, however, that he’s hoping ANYTHING can bring him back to his old status. 🙂