NASA's push to reinstate Pluto's planetary status is misguided

"Pluto appears as a receding crescent in this approximately true color composite image captured by NASA's New Horizons probe on July 14, 2015. Tinged blue by a high-altitude haze, Pluto appears as a receding crescent in this approximately true color composite image captured by NASA's New Horizons probe on July 14, 2015. Mountains and other topographic features of Pluto's surface are silhouetted against the haze."

"I am very much in the camp of make Pluto a planet again.' And I would say we are doing some papers right now on, I think, a position that we would love to escalate through the scientific community to revisit this discussion and ensure that Clyde Tombaugh gets the credit he received once and rightfully deserves to receive again."

"But it's not up to NASA to classify Pluto as anything. That responsibility lies with the International Astronomical Union (or IAU), which famously demoted Pluto to the status of dwarf planet in a vote held in 2006. That event was contentious; of the roughly 9,000 IAU members at the time, only a few hundre"

Pluto appears as a distant, hazy world in images from NASA’s New Horizons, with mountains silhouetted against atmospheric haze. A U.S. Senate exchange prompted NASA’s administrator to express support for revisiting Pluto’s planetary status and giving Clyde Tombaugh renewed recognition. Classification authority belongs to the International Astronomical Union, which demoted Pluto to dwarf planet status in 2006 after a contentious vote. The demotion involved a small fraction of the IAU’s membership, raising questions about legitimacy and consensus. The core issue is not Pluto’s physical properties but the insistence that the solar system must fit into strict categories of “planet” or “nonplanet.”

Read at www.scientificamerican.com