Cara O'Connor, a six-year-old Irish girl who dreams of becoming a NASA astronaut one day, has requested the space agency to reclassify Pluto as a planet, the Washington Post reported. In 2006, the International Astronomical Union (IAU), which is the governing body of astronomy, downgraded Pluto from a planet to a dwarf planet.
However, the decade-old decision has not gone down well with Cara who shot a letter to the agency urging them to "fix this problem" for her and "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 in her letter.
On Saturday, the Post reported that the little girl even spoke 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.
Meanwhile, Cara was seen in another video saying that Pluto "was put in the trash can and was scared by planet Earth."
She wrote: "This was really mean because no one or no planet or dwarf planets should be put in the trash can."
In response to this little girl's plea, James Green, Director of NASA's Planetary Science Division said that he was really happy to see her interest in Pluto. He replied: "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."
"I hope that you will discover a new planet, and I trust that if you continue to do well in school we will see you at NASA one of these days," Green wrote.
