Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered Pluto in 1930, had his ashes sent into space on the New Horizons spacecraft in 2006. The probe has since passed Pluto and entered the Kuiper Belt. Tombaugh was also an advocate for UFO research. Pluto was named by an 11-year-old girl and inspired the name of Disney’s dog.
Pluto may have lost its planetary status in 2006, but its human discoverer still has a big claim to fame: Its remains were the first to travel outside our solar system. Clyde Tombaugh, who spotted Pluto in 1930, died in 1997 wishing his ashes were sent into space. Nine years later, some of its ashes were placed on the New Horizons spacecraft, a NASA probe that, as of 2019, has passed Pluto and entered the Kuiper Belt, an area of icy rock-like objects a billions of miles from Earth. Passing beyond the heliosphere, New Horizons will eventually join the still functioning probes Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 (both launched in 1977) in the interstellar medium. Tombaugh, who died at age 90, was an amateur astronomer when he was hired to help search for planets beyond Neptune, resulting in the discovery of Pluto. Tombaugh was also an outspoken advocate of serious scientific research into the presence of unidentified flying objects (UFOs).
A dwarf planet far, far away:
Since its discovery in 1930, Pluto has only traveled about a third of its orbit around the sun.
An 11-year-old girl proposed the name Pluto for the Tombaugh discovery; Pluto is the Roman name for the god of the underworld.
Disney’s dog Pluto is named after the then-planet and debuted in 1930, the same year as the planetary discovery.
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