Clyde Tombaugh ashes will be first to leave solar system

New Horizons now travels to the mysterious Kuiper Belt or Third Zone before eventually leaving the Solar System altogether and taking Clyde Tombaugh's ashes with it

By Sarah Knapton 14 July 2015 • 6:43pm

The man who discovered Pluto will become the first human to have his remains sent outside the Solar System after his ashes were placed on board the Nasa spacecraft New Horizons.

Clyde Tombaugh died on January 17 1997, nine years and two days before New Horizon’s launch, but one of his final requests was for his ashes to be sent into space.

^{The ashes attached to New Horizons}

A small container carrying his remains is affixed to the inside of the upper deck of the probe bearing the inscription: “Interred herein are remains of American Clyde W. Tombaugh, discoverer of Pluto and the solar system's 'third zone' Adelle and Muron's boy, Patricia's husband, Annette and Alden's father, astronomer, teacher, punster, and friend: Clyde W. Tombaugh (1906-1997)."

Tombaugh, who grew up on a farm in Kansas, was working at Lowell Observatory in Arizona when he made the landmark discovery on February 18 1930.

Previously an amateur astronomer, he had been hired to help find a planet beyond Neptune. He also credited of discovering 14 other asteroids.

After New Horizons passes Pluto it will travel into the mysterious Kuiper Belt or Third Zone before eventually leaving the Solar System altogether, making Tombaugh's ashes the first to journey so far.

^{Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto in 1930}

Only Voyager has crossed into interstellar space. The craft was sent out with the intention of making contact with intelligent life.

It would be fitting if Tombaugh’s ashes were eventually found by an extraterrestrial race. He is one of the most eminent astronomers to have reported seeing UFOs.

"This is the first mission into the real outer Solar System, the real Wild West, the Kuiper Belt," said Alan Stern, New Horizon’s principal investigator

"We haven’t done a first reconnaissance mission of a new planet since 1989, 26 years ago, and nothing like it is in the books to ever happen again.

^{Annette Tombaugh-Sitze daughter of Clyde Tombaugh, celebrates with the New Horizons team}

"It’s the end of the era, the closing of the first era of the reconnaissance of our Solar System.

The probe is nuclear powered and is fuelled, appropriately by plutonium, which was named after Pluto. It has enough fuel to keep going until the Mid-2030s by which point it should have left the Solar System.

“Over the next 20 years it could operate and return scientific data, from a Kuiper Belt flyby and then we have a chance to go further out of the heliosphere (Solar System) and potentially cross the interstellar boundary and sample interstellar space,” said Dr Stern.