NASA's romantically named New Horizons is well on its way to the
distant dwarf-planet Pluto. The plutonium-powered spacecraft,
traveling at 47,000 mph, will flyby chilly Pluto in July 2015.
If successful, it will be the first manmade object ever to reach
Pluto which swings between 2.7 and 4.5 billion miles from the
Sun. New Mexico astronomer Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto
accidentally in 1930. I had the honor of meeting and chatting
with Tombaugh at a 1977 meeting of the Lehigh Valley Amateur
Astronomical Society of Pennsylvania. Tombaugh was a gentle and
humble man. I think he would be proud of the New Horizons
mission to reach this smallest of planets. Pluto is one of the
farthest, large planetary body from our Sun. Occasionally, Pluto
gives up this position to Neptune due to the unusual, elliptical
Plutonian orbit. A year on Pluto lasts 248 terrestrial years. In
2000, after scrubbing its so-called Pluto Fast Flyby, later
renamed Kuiper-Pluto Express mission, space agency officials
were forced to reconside