Pluto has been quiet a juggle for NASA in deciding whether it’s a planet or not a planet. NASA had long before scrapped Pluto from the planetary status in 2006 because they found out that it was smaller than our moon and not of planetary size. It was therefore deemed as a “dwarf planet” instead. It status has always ranked up a controversy.
One of NASA’s administrator, Bridenstine has been a fan of ‘Pluto the Planet’. He came up with a debate once again by going public at an event show in Oklahoma at the FIRST Robotics on August 24 and reinstated his belief that Pluto indeed is a planet.
He backed his statement in order to not raise controversy among the scientific community thus going against convention. He stated- “Just so you know, in my view Pluto is a planet. You can write that the NASA administrator declared Pluto a planet once again. I’m sticking by that, it’s the way I learned it and I’m committed to it.”
Bridenstine was criticized by many for its remark given the fact that he didn’t come from a scientific background. Pluto in 1930 was quickly declared as a planet in our solar system soon after it was discovered by Clyde Tombaugh. The planetary status was scrapped from the solar system in the year 2006 by the International Astronomical Union for being even “smaller than the Moon”.
The debate started rising when NASA’s scientist from the 2015 Horizons mission co-authored a paper seeking the reclassification of Pluto as a planet.