It’s been nearly a decade since scientists decided Pluto isn’t a member of that prestigious gang of celestial bodies surrounding our sun. We’ve been told the icy world isn’t a planet since 2006, but over the last few days it sure hasn’t felt that way.
That’s because New Horizons, a probe the size of a grand piano launched that same year, has finally arrived at its destination. And with the photos and data the vessel has sent back to Earth, we’re learning more about Pluto than we ever have in the 85 years since it was discovered.
Ever since NASA started releasing high definition images of Pluto last week — the first ever at these distances — I’ve been taken back to my elementary school years, when dinosaurs and space travel ruled my imagination.
As stated time and again by various news organizations and space blogs, this is the first time in a generation that we’ve collected this much new information on another world in our solar system.
It’s exciting stuff.
I lost hours at a time catching up on the research and images that NASA released as the week went on. It was like discovering the solar system for the first time all over again. Picture after picture, news story after news story formed questions and mental exclamations as I read through explainers and watched videos on the mission.
What’s the heart-shaped valley on the bottom right corner of that photo?
Mountains? Why are there mountains on Pluto?
That tiny ball of ice hasn’t orbited the sun even once since the American Revolution? Really?
It’s that same child-like wonder that had me drawing maps and models of the planets back at Memorial Elementary School in McMinnville. While teachers droned on and on about multiplication tables, adjectives and nouns, I was sketching Jupiter’s Great Red Spot and imagining what it might be like to visit Neptune. (Admittedly, at the time I thought it was all one big ocean.)
Since then, I’ve harbored a minor interest in space — it’s insanely beautiful, after all — but years of developing the right side of my brain made me file away whatever desire I had to truly pursue space with a passion.
Seriously, just look at this picture of the Milky Way over Big Sur. (Creative Commons photo courtesy of Flickr user Yan L)
Besides, the sheer amount of math required to pass the midterm and final exams in the astronomy classes I’ve taken at the University of Oregon had me cursing silently right up to the moment I handed them in.
Even so, whenever I go camping, I make it a point to sneak away alone for a moment, gaze at the sky and ponder the vast expanses of space and the relatively tiny worlds that pepper our solar system. In my mind, we’ve still got 10 planets, even if experts say otherwise.
Pluto gets a pass, just like I did as an honorary member of my high school’s cross-country team for a month one summer. (That’s how my presence at team events and games of ultimate was justified.)
For one week, it also felt like Pluto was back in the same club as Earth, Mars and Jupiter in the eyes of the rest of the world. At the same time, I was right back in that third-grade classroom, neglecting whatever practical lessons my teacher was drawing up on the blackboard and imagining what it would be like to visit another world.
Thanks for that, NASA.
