Of course Pluto deserves to be a planet. Size isn’t everything | Stuart Clark

While the New Horizons flyby is cause for celebration, Pluto's demotion to dwarf planet seems to have passed the mission by. We should reinstate its full planetary rights

Hiding behind the cheers and the whoops that accompanied the triumph of Nasa's New Horizons mission, there was an elephant in the room every bit as large as the world that the spacecraft had been sent to study. Embarrassingly, Pluto is no longer a planet according to the International Astronomical Union, the astronomers' regulating body.

That didn't stop the mission's principal investigator, Alan Stern, referring to it in passing as a planet during the press conference at closest approach. Nor did it stop Nasa's chief administrator, Charles Bolden, using the P-word in the days leading up to the flyby. But the reality is that the argument over Pluto's status has been rancorous, and highlights both the lofty ambition of science and the pettiness of its practice.

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