New Horizons will make the first flyby of Pluto in July 2015. So distant even the Hubble Space Telescope can't get a good view, this first close up should rewrite the book on Pluto and it's moons. Even though it's demoted to a dwarf planet, it's quite a tease because we know so little about it. We thought it was as big as Earth, but it's not even as big as our Moon. There is a poll on naming the new moons of Pluto....William Shatner suggested one of them be named Vulcan.
^ Had to think for awhile but think I got it. My interest in Pluto is simply "What does it look like?!" Besides, it's hard to not think of it as a proper planet, even if I can't argue with the 2006 definition of a planet....if we make an exception for Pluto, thousands of other bodies will qualify. One of the Voyager probes went to one of Neptune's moons (Triton?) and thus could not make it to Pluto. After years of lobbying, New Horizons is on the way - maybe the atmosphere won't freeze before it arrives. Now they are worried the probe might have to distance itself to be safe from icy debris. This is a concern because if they are finding more moons, there could be more objects that could total the probe - it can be tiny yet be lethal at 30,000-60,000 mph. It's hard to think of Pluto as less of a major planet, but of it as the edge of the Solar System. Voyager I is at the edge of the Solar Wind at over 123 AU (123x the distance the Earth is from the Sun.) Comets and other objects may be orbiting much farther at 1-2 light years from the Sun....Voyager I is only 16 light hours from us!
The results on naming a Pluto moon Vulcan: "He's dead Jim" Sorry, Trekkies: Pluto moons dubbed Styx and Kerberos (and not Vulcan) - NBC News.com
