Exploring New Horizons No Matter what that Horizon is

An Expanded Image of Pluto's Surface Taken by New Horizons.
Courtesy of NASA.

In January, 2006, on the third attempt that week, the New Horizons space probe was successfully launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, hitching a ride aboard an Atlas V rocket until it punched through the Earth’s atmosphere. The probe separated and began speeding away at over 36,000 miles an hour towards the 9th planet of Pluto. The New Horizons probe would reach its destination 9 years later and provide more information than we’ve ever known before on the outer reaches of our solar system. But, after the initial reflexive celebration of the launch, the mission posed a controversy. In August, 2006, just shy of 7 months after the New Horizons mission was launched, the International Astronomer’s Union (IAU) met during their annual assembly to revise the definition of a planet. Pluto was the celestial body in question, having its planetary status up for debate for quite some time. The astronomer’s board came to a conclusion that under the new definition of a planet, Pluto no longer fit the bill. Now classified as a dwarf planet, the decision sparked a vexed debate over the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) and US Government’s decision to pour over 700 million dollars and countless other resources into exploring an object that we don’t even consider significant enough to be a planet, less than a year prior. The scientific community knows so much more about the Kuiper Belt and the outer solar system than they did at the time of the launch, that even though Pluto has been classified as a dwarf planet since the New Horizons Space mission launched towards the icy rock in 2006, the mission is no less significant and is in many ways more useful as a platform for the world to learn more about the outer reaches of our solar system, the next step in mankind's exploration of space.

If you’re trying to understand the controversy over New Horizons, it’s crucial to understand the core issue - Is Pluto a planet or not? Ask NASA or the IAU if Pluto is a planet or not and you might get different answers. Furthermore, you might receive the same variation in responses if you asked different representatives within each organization. Pluto’s planetary demotion from planet to dwarf planet, courtesy of the IAU, was a calculated decision. The Astronomer’s Union defines a planet as follows: An object must (a) be in orbit around the sun, (b) have a sufficient mass to hold an astronomically sized spherical shape, and (c) have cleared its trajectory. Pluto fulfills all those requisites, with the exception of the last one. Previously unknown until the mid-90s, Pluto occupies a space in the middle of the Kuiper Belt, an asteroid region past Neptune of 100,000 plus celestial bodies that never formed into planets and might be billions of years away from doing so. Frasier Cain explains part (c) of the planetary requirement checklist in his editorial well - That the object must have a clear pathway of which it orbits the sun, and Pluto’s path is pretty far from clear. The IAU essentially decided that because Pluto is in such an astronomically tight vicinity with other objects in the Kuiper Belt and its physical mass isn’t significant enough to ignore that fact, Pluto could not be considered a full fledged planet. Critics of this rule cite planets such as Jupiter or Saturn, neither of which have a “completely clear” trajectory. Jupiter has 67 moons and sits in the middle of an asteroid field as large as the Kuiper Belt. Saturn has millions of projectiles of dust, ice, and rock in its rings, so it doesn’t necessarily fit the definition of a “clear trajectory”. The difference is that Jupiter and Saturn are 150,000 times and 43,000 times more massive than Pluto, respectively. Both gas giants are so massive that it ceases to matter what’s around them. Jupiter and Saturn don’t need to clear their orbital path because they overwhelm their orbital path. Pluto is the largest known entity in the Kuiper Belt, but not by much. If Pluto were to be given full planetary status then other Kuiper objects would need the same consideration, such as Eris, a dwarf planet more massive than Pluto. The dwarf planets that we know are in the Kuiper Belt are correctly classified, seeing as their orbital path is too crowded to be considered anything else.

An Image of Pluto Taken by New Horizons
 as it Approaches.
Courtesy of NASA.

As we left 2006, the divisiveness began to grow in the space exploration world over what exactly the mission was going to accomplish, now that Pluto was no longer a planet. New Horizons continued to speed towards the outer edge of the solar system. In 2007, the probe did a flyby of Jupiter to collect photos, atmospheric details, and to map the geology of some of Jupiter’s moons. The gravity of the Jupiter flyby slingshotted the probe, as planned, and New Horizons’ travel time was reduced by 3 years. New Horizons continued to take photos of asteroids and trojans of Neptune as it passed them. In early 2015, New Horizons began its 6 month pass of its ultimate objective - Pluto and its satellites. It was an incredibly productive half a year of data collection. New Horizons captured long exposure shots of Pluto and all 4 of its moons, mapped both Charon (Pluto’s largest moon) and Pluto itself down to a 25 mile radius, and took readings of Pluto’s atmosphere. The data transfer will most likely take another year, but all photos and scientific readings so far have come back at an accuracy estimated to be 5,000 times greater than Mariner ever recorded of Mars. There is no question that New Horizons accomplished its original mission in providing more information on the dwarf system of Pluto. In August, NASA approved the funds to keep the probe operational to continue on through, past Pluto, further into the Kuiper Belt. It’s remarkably convenient that now that we know so much more about the Kuiper region than we did in 2006, that we happen to have a probe in that region, finishing a mission, that is essentially looking for something to explore. Since the probe is equipped with so many devices (atmospheric sensors, cameras, plasma ion sensors, etc.), New Horizons can accomplish the same tasks it accomplished with the Pluto and apply them to Kuiper objects.

This still doesn't answer the question of why do we explore anything in the first place. The exploration of space has always been a controversial issue, even during NASA's formation in the late 50s and 60s when space discovery was, in the grand scheme of things, a social status symbol for superpower nations. Astronomy journalist Stuart Clark wrote in an editorial that "To deny Pluto [planetary status]... is to deny the cultural history of astronomy". Stuart Clark is a proponent of Pluto being reinstated as a planet, which makes him wrong for the right reasons. Denying that Pluto is a planet is to believe in modern science and the willingness to accept the fact that some previous ideas were incorrect, not to choose not to believe in research for the sake of glorifying the history of astronomy. What is offensive to the cultural history of astronomy is to no longer care to explore. After New Horizons completed its 6 month pass in July, professor Stephen Hawking created a video of him congratulating the New Horizons team for pushing the envelope of space exploration. He went on to say that the New Horizons mission might very well help us better understand how our solar system was formed as well as to explain the mysterious system of Pluto. Later in the video, on the topic of space exploration, he said simply "we explore because we are human and we want to know."

We continue on with our exploration because we want to know more. There are things beyond our known solar system waiting to discovered, even if they aren't currently tangible. We've established that Pluto is a planet and it shouldn't matter either way. New Horizons did its job, we just categorized the job it did differently. Now its hurdling through space further into the unknown, but because we explore, New Horizons overtime mission might help us know what's in the unknown. The idea that NASA arbitrarily spends resources to fund missions to anything they see fit holds no merit. For all we know, New Horizons could find objects beyond Pluto that telescopes on earth could never see.

Works Cited

(Op-Ed) "The Real Reasons We Explore Space," Air & Space Magazine, July 2007, accessed October 4th, 2015.
http://www.airspacemag.com/space/the-real-reasons-we-explore-space-18816871/?all

(Op-Ed) “NASA’s New horizons opens up a great future of space exploration,” Deseret News, August 1, 2015, accessed September 24, 2015
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865633652/NASAs-New-Horizons-opens-up-a-great-future-of-space-exploration.html?pg=all

(Info) Millie Dent. "Here’s What It Cost to Send NASA’s New Horizons to Pluto." thefiscaltime.com
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2015/07/14/Here-s-What-It-Cost-Send-NASA-s-New-Horizons-Pluto (accessed October 4th, 2015).

(Info) International Astronomer's Union. "Pluto and the Developing Landscape of Our Solar System." iau.org. https://www.iau.org/public/themes/pluto/ (accessed October 4th, 2015).

(Op-Ed) Stuart Clark, “Of course Pluto Deserves to be a Planet. Size isn’t Everything,” The Guardian, July 15, 2015. (accessed September 24, 2015).
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/15/pluto-planet-size-nasa-new-horizons

(Op-Ed) “Professor Stephen Hawking Congratulates the NASA New Horizons Team" YouTube video, 1:04, posted by "NASA New Horizons," July 14, 2015 (accessed October 4th, 2015)
2011, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=makDyycHvmw&feature=fvhl.

(Op-Ed) "Pluto, here we come, whatever you are” The Los Angeles Daily News, January 29, 2015, accessed September 24, 2015
http://www.dailynews.com/opinion/20150129/pluto-here-we-come-whatever-you-are-editorial

(Op-Ed) “To Pluto,” Nature 522 (04 June 2015): 6, accessed September 24, 2015
doi: 10.1038/522006b

(Op-Ed) “Pluto, up close, will always be a planet,” cleveland.com, July 25,2015, accessed September 24, 2015 

http://www.cleveland.com/opinion/index.ssf/2015/07/pluto_will_always_be_a_planet.html

(Op-Ed) "Why Pluto is No Longer a Planet," universetoday.com, January 5th, 2012. Accessed October 4th, 2015. 

http://www.universetoday.com/13573/why-pluto-is-no-longer-a-planet/