When I was your age, Pluto was a planet

Monday marked the one year anniversary of our tiny friends demotion from planet-hood.

While this was a sad day I understand and agree with the decision completley. I even bought this --> shirt from my friends at Threadless to commemorate the occasion.

See, the major problem is that Pluto's orbit is too eccentric. While other planets orbit the sun pretty close to the ecliptic, Pluto is almost 17 degrees off. If you would imagine an cantaloupe, for instance, lying in small depression on the ground. This is the sun. The other eight planets are from the size of pebbles to maybe, say, a small tomato (for Jupiter) in various places on the ground around the "sun." Now imagine you are lying down on your stomach looking at our playground solar system. Pluto would be largish dust mote somewhere above your head, spinning about the sun once every 247.9 Terran years. It's way out of line with regards to the rest of the planets.

Another problem is with Pluto's largest "moon," Charon. Technically Charon and Pluto make up what is known as a binary system due to the fact that they rotate each other. Their barycentre (center of gravity) is actually above either body's surface (although quite a bit closer to Pluto) and they are tidally locked. So, if you were to hang out in spaceship between the two, it would appear that both Pluto and Charon would spin around your ship always with the same surface always facing you.

Anyway, with these reasons and others; including what kicked off this whole debate in the first place, the discovery of many other Pluto sized objects outwards of the Neptunian orbit; scientists, in 2006, from the International Astronomical Union redefined what it means to be a planet and kicked the old boy out. It was a pretty good run, I think, for being such an odd-ball to begin with and everyone should be satisfied by the decision. Our solar system is now a happy and uniform family with (currently) 8 planets and 3 "dwarf planets"; Pluto not even being the largest of these.

While Pluto was still a planet, NASA launched the New Horizons mission to what, at the time, was the only unexplored planet in the Solar System.Voyager 1 had a shot at a Pluto flyby but the mission controllers opted at that time to have it explore the Saturian moon Titan. Not a bad plan overall, since Voyager's trip partially lead to the more recent mission of Cassini–Huygens which proved Titan to be the only other body in the Solar System to have stable bodies of surface liquid (very cool, but off topic). Anyway... New Horizons was launched (as the fastest vehicle to date) in early 2006 to examine Pluto, it's three moons, and possibly other Kuiper Belt objects in the vicinity. It should arrive at Pluto on July 14, 2015; coming within approximately 6,200 miles of the surface and travelling roughly 30,000 miles per hour.

It was also confirmed by NASA, that the launch contained a portion of Pluto's discoverer's ashes. Yup, that is right. Enjoy your flight Mr. Tombaugh. We can all only dream of our ashes making the journey home to the stars.

"It may be that the old astrologers had the truth exactly reversed, when they believed that the stars controlled the destinies of men. The time may come when men control the destinies of stars". - Arthur C. Clarke

The only question that then remains is one of mnemonics: Now that My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas no more, just what is she going to do?