Our next question is from Arun from California: Could this mission prove that Pluto isn't a planet?
This seems to be the question on everyone's mind right now. In fact, in today's Parade magazine --
Really?
-- on the cover. That was the cover story. You know, how many planets are there? Hint, the answer is not nine.
Because some people want to demote Pluto, because Pluto is very small. It's only -- it's less -- it's only about 70
percent the size of the Earth's moon, and so some people say, well, geeze, Pluto shouldn't be a moon for that reason.
But on the other hand, Pluto is spherical, which means it has enough mass to form a sphere. It has an atmosphere,
has some other attributes that we normally associate with planets. So a lot of people think that Pluto is legitimately a planet.
It's been a planet for 70, 60 years and there is no way that we can take it off the list now.
But the problem is, earlier this summer, a new object was discovered out in the Kuiper Belt as slightly larger than
Pluto. So if you're going to call Pluto a planet, you have to call this other object a planet. It's been nicknamed, by the way, Xena.
I don't think that's gonna stick, but... And, and the interesting thing is that we've only uncovered the tip of the iceberg.
There are probably lots of Pluto-sized or Charon-sized objects out in the Kuiper Belt and we'll
probably end up with on the order of 100 planets eventually.