Journey to the Dwarf Planet Essay

Pluto is a space object that has been mistaken for a planet and a comet in the past. New evidence has revealed that the previously thought ninth planet of our solar system is actually just an ice-dwarf, and comparable to all other objects in the Kuiper Belt. This paper explores Pluto through the vision of New Horizons, the fastest spacecraft ever launched. This spacecraft would travel to Pluto in approximately nine years and reveal much about the surface of this unusual space object that humanity feels especially attached to, given that it was â€Å"a part of our solar system† for a long time. Using S. Alan Stern’s explanation of the importance of Pluto’s surface – that, in fact, this space object carries essential information about the origins of the solar system – this paper provides a reason for humanity’s interest in the mission to Pluto. It is suggested that Pluto’s environment would provide important clues about the Earth’s environment. And even if it does not, all news is good news in the world of science. It may very well be that the mission to Pluto would teach humanity nothing new, and only renew its appreciation for the living environment of Earth. Perhaps this new awareness and appreciation would somehow help to save the Earth’s environment. JOURNEY TO THE DWARF PLANET Page # 3 Journey to the Dwarf Planet Pluto is only 1413 miles in diameter, with a surface that is believed to be made up of nitrogen, carbon monoxide, methane and water ices. Many of the moons in the solar system are bigger in size than Pluto. Moreover, Pluto is said to have its own satellite, Charon, which may or may not be considered a regular kind of satellite, given that it is almost as big as Pluto (Connor, 2006). According S. Alan Stern (2002), writing for Scientific American, the material on Pluto’s surface may sublimate â€Å"into a rarefied atmosphere when the planet is in the part of its orbit that is closest to the sun. † In addition, scientists believe that Pluto’s surface may be experiencing the eruption of geysers on occasion. Gas and ice may be shooting above the surface of the planet in plumes. Today, we understand that Pluto is a dwarf planet, not a real one. It has been called the ice-dwarf, too, seeing that this space object is far different from the planets in our solar system. The rotation of Pluto, for instance, is in the opposite direction to the rotation of the eight planets we know – Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Pluto is most unlike the Earth, which is a rocky planet. It is also unlike the gaseous Jupiter (Connor). Hence, scientists have been wondering about the real nature of Pluto for quite some time. Pluto has been referred to as a comet to boot (Wilker, 2006). It all started only ten years after Pluto was first discovered by American astronomer Clyde Tombaugh in 1930 (Connor). During the 1940s and 1950s, researchers suggested that perhaps Pluto was the brightest of a vast group of icy space objects in the area that it occupies. This JOURNEY TO THE DWARF PLANET Page # 4 concept came to be known as the Kuiper Belt, named after the Dutch-American astronomer, Gerard Kuiper, who was foremost in casting doubts about Pluto’s status in our solar system (Stern). Based on new evidence, scientists have come to the conclusion that the Kuiper Belt contains at least one hundred thousand objects that are larger than 100 kilometers across. In fact, the Kuiper Belt may very well be â€Å"the big brother to the asteroid belt,† writes Stern. This big brother of the asteroid belt has more mass, more objects, including those of larger sizes, and â€Å"a greater supply of ancient, icy and organic material left over from the birth of the solar system. † Stern adds: It is now clear that Pluto is not an anomaly. Instead it lies within a vast swarm of smaller bodies orbiting between about five billion and at least eight billion kilometers from the sun. Because this far-off region may hold important clues to the early development of the solar system, astronomers are keenly interested in learning more about Pluto, its moon, Charon, and the bodies making up the Kuiper Belt. It is not only the astronomers that are interested in learning more about Pluto. Rather, it seems that the entire humanity is longing to find out about its own origins, and how it came to occupy the environment that it lives in today. Given that greater awareness about Pluto and its environment would provide humanity with clues regarding the origin of the Earth’s environment – scientists have worked very hard to reach JOURNEY TO THE DWARF PLANET Page # 5 Pluto somehow. Explaining their efforts in his article, â€Å"Journey to the Farthest Planet,† Stern introduces to the reader the $488 million project called New Horizons. This is a mission established by the Southwest Research Institute, based in San Antonio, Texas, and the Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) at Johns Hopkins University. New Horizons is further supported by a team of scientists from various universities, research institutes, and NASA centers. The mission is, of course, for humanity to explore Pluto and its so-called â€Å"double,† Charon (Connor). According to Stern, this mission is â€Å"equivalent of conducting an archaeological dig into the history of the outer solar system – a place where researchers can get a valuable glimpse of the long-gone era of planetary formation. †