The debate over Pluto's status in the solar system never seems to end.
As NASA's New Horizons spacecraft is set to fly by Pluto on Tuesday morning and provide the clearest images of the dwarf planet ever, the question still remains: Is Pluto a planet?
The spacecraft has been traveling for nearly a decade to take the images and has already sent back photos. The latest image, which was taken on July 9 from 3.3 million miles away, shows never-before-seen detail of the dwarf planet's surface.
"We're close enough now that we're just starting to see Pluto's geology," New Horizons program scientist Curt Niebur said in a news release.
The purpose of the mission is to better understand where Pluto and its moons figure into the rest of the solar system, and the images could help scientists determine what Pluto's atmosphere is made of and what its surface looks like.
Supporters of Pluto's status as a full-fledged planet are hopeful the New Horizons images will bolster their case to reinstate Pluto.
"I think that one of the things that will come out of the New Horizons mission is that the public will take a look, and they won't know what else to call Pluto but a planet, and a pretty exciting one," New Horizons principle investigator Alan Stern toldPopular Science.
What exactly the scientists will be able to conclude though, will depend on how the images turn out. Those images will probably not be available until Tuesday night.
NASA currently classifies Pluto as a dwarf planet, after it was downgraded in 2006 from being the solar system's ninth planet.
The International Astronomical Union's official definition states that a planet:
• Is in orbit around the sun.
• Is round or nearly round.
• Has "cleared the neighborhood" around its orbit, meaning it is not surrounded by objects of similar size and characteristics.
For Pluto, the challenge is meeting the third criteria. Pluto has many dwarf planets nearby and Pluto sometimes overlaps Neptune's orbit. The IAU also relegated Pluto to dwarf status because of its tiny size (Pluto's 750 mile radius is about one-fifth the size of Earth's).
However, when the vote to demote Pluto took place, out of the nearly 10,000 members of the IAU, only 237 supported the resolution to redefine Pluto as a dwarf planet and 157 voted against it. The other members were not in attendance? when the vote took place. The IAU general assembly convenes again next month, however, none of the resolutions slated to be discussed relate to Pluto's status as a dwarf planet, said Lars Lindberg Christensen, IAU's spokesman.
Doyle Rice contributed to this report.
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