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NASA's New Horizons To Arrive At Pluto With Clyde Tombaugh's Ashes

Posted by timothy on from the economy-rate dept.

hypnosec writes NASA's New Horizons is bringing with it the ashes of Clyde Tombaugh – its discoverer – as it cruises towards the now dwarf-planet or 'plutoid'. The probe will be close enough on January 15 to start observing Pluto. Clyde Tombaugh discovered the ice and rock-laden Pluto in 1930 and one of his final requests was that his ashes be sent into space. Tombaugh died on January 17, 1997. Fulfilling that wish NASA has fitted the upper deck of New Horizons probe with a small container containing Tombaugh's ashes alongside a total of 7 scientific instruments. "Interned herein are remains of American Clyde W. Tombaugh, discoverer of Pluto and the solar system's 'third zone'", reads the inscription on the container.

10 of 108 comments (clear)

  1. Not all of his ashes.. by VMaN · · Score: 4, Informative

    Just a small portion of his ashes. Postage to the Kupier belt is still pretty expensive.

    1. Re:Not all of his ashes.. by itzly · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Or, when the design was done, they had some room left over, and they couldn't find a 7-gram scientific instrument.

    2. Re:Not all of his ashes.. by CanEHdian · · Score: 4, Insightful

      And still a tremendous waste of money to placard those who fund NASA for emotional reasons, not scientific reasons.

      What do you think is going to do more for NASA? The discovery/proof that Mars once was a planet with liquid water and perhaps even microbial life (which is HUGE from a scientific perspective), or two Good Ole American Boys planting the Stars & Stripes on the surface of the red planet, broadcast "live" on all major TV networks in the US and around the world? It is all about emotion: enthousiasm, national pride, and conquering that Final Frontier and leading the way. That's how it worked with Apollo.

      --
      When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
    3. Re:Not all of his ashes.. by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Interesting

      they also must consider unique ways to gain publicity with the general public.

      In my daughter's 4th grade class, they have a chart of the solar system, and they are tracking the progress of New Horizons as a class project. The ashes are one of the things the kids are most fascinated by. The science is helped along by some human interest. If it leads to just one or two additional kids pursuing careers in science or engineering, then this was a good investment of seven grams of payload.

      It is nice to see some esteem and recognition going to a scientist, rather than some politician.

    4. Re:Not all of his ashes.. by mbone · · Score: 3, Interesting

      That weight would have gone to Pluto anyway; the ashes (plus the coin) were used as counterweights, for trim.

  2. Just a flyby... by mbone · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Clyde Tombaugh will really be interred in interstellar space, as New Horizons has no means of scattering his ashes on Pluto.

    1. Re:Just a flyby... by Waffle+Iron · · Score: 4, Funny

      ... unless they've made a slight math error in their navigation computations.

  3. Re:It's a first... by mbone · · Score: 5, Informative

    Lunar Prospector carried Gene Shoemaker's ashes to the Moon, and was "deliberately targeted to impact in a permanently shadowed area of the Shoemaker crater near the lunar south pole." Now, they did that for science reasons, but it was still a very fitting end (they could have chosen another crater, of course).

  4. Not Yet Better than Hubble by mbone · · Score: 4, Informative

    New Horizons will start imaging (and optical navigation) this month, but it won't be better than Hubble until mid-May. That's when the fun will really start.

  5. Re:And by crunchygranola · · Score: 4, Informative

    And would they have sent his ashes if Pluto had been demoted already?

    You are confused. Pluto was not "demoted". It in its old (inaccurate) classification it was the smallest and last planet to be discovered, a Johnny-Come-Lately.

    What Tombaugh really did was discover the first of a whole new class of objects - the Kuiper Belt Objects that extend far past the planets. And Pluto is its king - it is the largest and most prominent of all the KBOs (Eris, is queen, having the exact same diameter as far as we can tell, but is more distant and dimmer).

    Discovering a whole new class of objects beats discovering yet another planet.

    --
    Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age