DR Alan storn

The principal  investgator  on Nasa's new horizons mission to pluto and the kuiper  belt  Dr alan stem (fourth from right) shares his thoughts on pluto's changing status as planetary  body.

Times change back in 2006' a cibvention  of astronomers declared pluto no longer a planet  but planetary  scientists  never  voted to ager Now following the exploration of pluto by nasa's New horizons in 2015 the pendulums of  planetary experts  and lay opinion are swinging strongly the other way. The  arguments  against photo  war that it was too small on too odd an orbit  and one of too many for schoolkisds  to remember their names but after the advances and scientific progress of the last decade from telescopic studies to the flyby of pluto we see new data overtiming those old ideas. since then pluto has been shown to be the largest known body in the deep outer solar system beyond  neptune and thousands of planets have been discovered orbiting other stars many in orbits like pluto showed new horizons dizzyingly complex surface that pluto showed horizons  and  discoveries  that pluto has five (more than Eath mars venus and mercury combined )- as well as  blue skies mountains glaciers a rocky interior and dunes- have tipped the scales back to planethood. we  know  that pluto  is not a comet a few kilometers across either it s huge with a circumfere of  almost 7,500km (4,600mi)- as far from manhattan wast across north america and the pacific to maui (in hawaii) in2016 pluto isn't seen just as  plant but the  largest of many small plants that inhabit our deep other  solar system and probably are common to other systems well.