More About Pluto
To read an article by Clyde Tombaugh regarding his discovery of Pluto, Click Here.
Info Regarding Pluto Stamps
Courtesy of NASA/JPL - My comments are in RED
Pluto Not Yet Explored
On October 1, 1991, an excited group of stamp collectors and engineers gathered in von Karman Auditorium at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to witness the US Postal Service's unveiling of a new set of stamps commemorating the United States' accomplishments in planetary exploration. Artist Ron Miller had created a set of ten stamps depicting the nine planets of our Solar System and Earth's Moon plus the spacecraft that had visited them... all except for the planet Pluto, that is.
The stamp showing the distant planet Pluto had no spacecraft in evidence, only the words "Pluto, Not Yet Explored."
One JPL employee took that message as a challenge. Robert Staehle, now Deputy Manager for the Outer Planets/Solar Probe Project, spoke with trajectory engineer Stacy Weinstein and others, which resulted in a consensus that if we were smart enough we could launch a spacecraft to Pluto using a blend of current technology and new advanced technologies to keep spacecraft cost, mass and power requirements down.
The Pluto Fast Flyby mission concept, which later evolved into the current planned Pluto-Kuiper Express mission, was initiated as a response to the message delivered on this stamp.
Let's not let the response to the message delivered on this stamp die.
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Mali Pluto stamp
A footnote to this story: Recently a stamp was issued for the Republic of Mali showing a likeness of Clyde Tombaugh, discoverer of Pluto, the planet, and a rendering of one of the earlier (1992) Pluto Fast Flyby spacecraft designs.
Seeing a stamp with a Pluto Probe on it truly shows there is great interest in a mission to Pluto. At the very least this mission should happen, in memory of Clyde Tombaugh.
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