6-year-old girl tells NASA to make Pluto a planet again

Cara Lucy O’Connor has a concern.

Pluto used to be one of the nine planets in the solar system, and it isn’t anymore. That’s not right, said the little girl from Ireland. So Cara, with the help of her teacher, wrote a letter to NASA hoping to persuade the space agency to “make Pluto a planet again.”

“I listened to a song and at the end of it the song said “Bring Pluto Back” — and I would really like that to happen,” Cara wrote.

She went on to explain that in 2006, Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet, “a type of planet that isn’t big enough to clear its orbit.” She talked about the Kuiper belt, a doughnut-shaped ring beyond Neptune where many dwarf planets are located.

“I really think Pluto should be a main planet again like Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus & Neptune, because in one video I watched called ‘Let’s go meet the planets,’ Pluto was at the very end,” she wrote.

In another video, she said, Pluto “was put in the trash can and was scared by planet Earth.”

“This was really mean,” Cara wrote, “because no one or no planet or dwarf planets should be put in the trash can.”

Cara dreams of becoming a NASA astronaut and “visit all the main planets including Pluto.” But in the meantime, she told NASA, “you need to fix this problem for me.”

Though not likely to result in a dramatic change in Pluto’s demoted status as a dwarf planet, the 6-year-old’s letter did not fall on deaf ears. James Green, director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division, wrote her back.

“I agree with you that Pluto is really cool — in fact, who would have believed that Pluto has a heart? . . . It’s a fascinating world that appears to be constantly changing. To me, it’s not so much about whether Pluto is a dwarf planet or not; it’s that Pluto is a fascinating place that we need to continue to study,” Green wrote.

“I hope that you will discover a new planet,” he added, “and I trust that if you continue to do well in school we will see you at NASA one of these days.”

Cara, who hopes to discover a planet and name it Planet Unicorn, often peppers her teachers with questions about why black holes exist, or whether the moon landing really happened.

“She had the most interesting mind. She asked questions that I couldn’t answer,” said Sarah O’Donovan, who taught Cara last year at Glasheen Girls’ School in Cork, Ireland. “She’s always interested in things that are far, far above her level.”

Cara said she’s been interested in space and astronomy since last year. She loves learning about “the forming of the planets,” she said.

“It’s really a delight for me,” Green said. “It’s a break in my day when I open up a letter like that and have an opportunity to see where these kids are at and spend time to actually answer their question.”