It’s the least we can do.
The proposed stamp, designed by Dan Durda
Two decades ago, the Postal Service issued a series of stamps depicting Earth, its moon, and the spacecraft sent to explore each of the other planets in the solar system.
The 10th stamp, featuring tiny, distant Pluto, was the only one to read “not yet explored.”
Those three words have annoyed Alan Stern ever since. Stern, an associate vice president and scientist at Southwest Research Institute, was making plans at the time for what would become the New Horizons mission to Pluto, which launched in 2006.
Now Stern, principal investigator of the mission, along with astronomer and artist Dan Durda, is trying to set the record straight. The scientists have designed a new stamp for Pluto, and they have launched a petition drive to get the post office to issue it when New Horizons reaches the dwarf planet in 2015.
And the old stamp? It has provided a little motivation for the whole enterprise.
“We took one of those old stamps that said “not yet explored,” and we put it on our spacecraft and are flying it to Pluto, as kind of an ‘in your face’ thing,” Stern said.
See here for some background, as well as a picture of the 1990 “not yet explored” stamp. Here’s the SWRI page about their quest, and here’s the petition. “Dwarf planet” or not, this deserves to be commemorated. They want to turn in the signatures by March 13, which is the 82nd anniversary of Pluto’s discovery by Clyde Tombaugh. Show Pluto a little love, won’t you?