{"id":19627,"date":"2015-07-30T17:48:44","date_gmt":"2015-07-30T09:48:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/nasa-missions-leader-calls-b-s-on-pluto-haters-will-it-make-a-difference\/"},"modified":"2015-07-30T17:48:44","modified_gmt":"2015-07-30T09:48:44","slug":"nasa-missions-leader-calls-b-s-on-pluto-haters-will-it-make-a-difference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/nasa-missions-leader-calls-b-s-on-pluto-haters-will-it-make-a-difference\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA mission\u2019s leader calls B.S. on Pluto haters: Will it make a difference?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"New
New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern\u2019s jaw drops as he ogles the first pictures to be sent back from the probe\u2019s Pluto flyby, shown on a fellow team member\u2019s laptop. (Credit: Bill Ingalls \/ NASA)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Can you say \u201cbullshit\u201d at NASA? The principal investigator for NASA\u2019s New Horizons mission did, in an outburst directed at the tortuous rules that led to Pluto\u2019s reclassification as a dwarf planet.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s bullshit,\u201d Alan Stern, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute, told Tech Insider \u2013 with the clear intent of being quoted.<\/p>\n

To call B.S. like that isn\u2019t surprising for Stern, who has worked for more than a quarter-century to get a spacecraft to the mysterious world on the solar system\u2019s edge. The success of the July 14 flyby has put Pluto in a new light, with 11,000-foot-high ice mountains, flowing glaciers of frozen nitrogen and hints of a subsurface ocean.<\/p>\n

\"Pluto.
Pluto. Photo via NASA\/JHUAPL\/SwRI<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When you also consider that Pluto has an extended atmosphere and five moons, who could consider it anything but an honest-to-goodness planet?<\/p>\n

The International Astronomical Union, that\u2019s who.<\/p>\n

Nine years ago, only months after New Horizons was launched, members of the IAU approved a hastily drawn-up set of rules that defined planets as objects that go around the sun, are big enough to crush themselves into roundish balls by the force of gravity alone, and have \u201ccleared the neighborhood around their orbits.\u201d<\/p>\n

They said Pluto didn\u2019t satisfy that third, ill-defined condition. As a result, Pluto was deemed not to be a planet, but a member of the newly defined category of \u201cdwarf planets.\u201d Which were not considered planets.<\/p>\n

The IAU\u2019s decision still has plenty of defenders \u2026<\/p>\n