Until only a few days back, if one googled for ‘pluto’ in Images, chances were one would be predominantly greeted by cartoon shots of a cute orangish disney pup wearing an impish smile. Fast-forward to the present, there’s a certain sci-fi aura about the search results. Dethroned as the ninth planet in the Solar System in 2006 to the downgraded status of a dwarf planet, our distant friend is back in the limelight. Named after the Roman god of the netherworld, the brand new detailed pictures beamed back to Earth by NASA’s aptly christened New Horizons space probe reveal that our cousin at the edge of space is actually much bigger than earlier thought by scientists.
It took the man-made craft over nine years and traversing a distance of about 4.88 billion km through the darkness of space at 49,000 km/hr to keep its tangential date with the outcast planet on Tuesday. That the spacecraft is powered by a nuclear generator fuelled by plutonium, a transuranic radioactive chemical element named after the dwarf planet, only comes a pleasant irony.
Pluto is smaller than our moon, but the scientific curiosity it has generated over decades since its discovery in 1930 at the Lowell Observatory in Arizona belies its relatively small size. The high-resolution images New Horizons sent back home of Pluto’s and several of its moon, chiefly Charon, shines a torchlight on its icy mountains, surface crates and much more. The zoomed-in pictures will now help uncover Pluto’s latent geological activities and unexplored terrain.
After sending back the collected data, the probe will alter its trajectory and cruise towards the Kuiper belt, the third zone in our Solar System that comprises several comets, asteroids and myriad massive celestial objects. The high-resolution camera employed by New Horizons named ‘Ralph’ captures visible and some infrared light and is fashioned to withstand constant bombardment of cosmic rays that criss-cross outer space.
Studying Pluto is naturally going to be a revelatory journey into understanding and learning more about the universe itself. It may also potentially throw more light on the formation of our own home planet, a mystery that never fails to puzzle the scientific community. Beyond the wonder and excitement of offering close-up glimpses of a Pluto sequestered at the boundaries of the Solar System, the new pictures are a reaffirmation of mankind’s insatiable curiosity for the far and away. It also moves a step closer to actually landing a spacecraft on the icy mass one day, enabling us to warm up to our lonely friend on a much deeper level.
The fact that Pluto was demoted only a little after New Horizons blasted off doesn’t diminish the importance and cosmic relevance of the Tuesday tryst that took place close to the heavens. Soon after the flyby, NASA’s chief administrator Charles Bolden in an interview on NASA TV expressed hopes that the scientists would have a re-think about Pluto’s nomenclature. “I call it a planet, but I’m not the rule maker,” he said, adding that differences over the planetoid’s status should in no way take the sheen off the grand achievement. Predictably, New Horizons’ interplanetary hand-shake with Pluto has re-ingnited the debate over whether to reinstate the spherical body to its former status and glory.
“Pluto just had its first visitor. Thanks NASA. It’s a great day for discovery and American leadership,” President Barack Obama tweeted after the successful flyby. It has certainly been more than just a great day of discovery, not just for the Americans, but for the entire world. Let’s hope that the spacecraft’s celestial rendezvous with the planetoid will help us unravel the mysteries of the hitherto enigma called Pluto.
When man first landed on the moon in 1969, it was touted as ‘one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind’. Maybe, it’s only a matter of time when another of his ilk takes a walk on Pluto, before sending back a selfie with a dark polar cap as the backdrop.