Everything You Know About Space is Wrong by Matt Brown

Author:Matt Brown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pavilion Books

No human has travelled further than the Moon

The astronauts aboard Apollo 13 are rightfully given credit for travelling further than any other humans. Their spacecraft, though crippled by an explosion, swung around the back of the Moon at a maximum distance from Earth of 400,171km (248,655 miles). No living human has been so far from home as Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert and Fred Haise. Yet if we stretch definitions a little – and, hey, it’s the end of the chapter, so why not? – there is one human who has travelled much, much further.

Clyde Tombaugh (1906–97) is most famous for discovering Pluto in 1930. At the time, it was considered the ninth planet, though it has since been relegated to a dwarf planet. He is also credited with discovering 15 asteroids and hundreds of stars, galaxies and clusters. This glittering career is reflected throughout the Solar System. A large crater on Mars bears the name Tombaugh, as does a range of cliffs in Antarctica. The famous heart-shaped planes on Pluto are known as Tombaugh Regio. And Tombaugh has one further accolade, yet to come: his will be the first human remains to leave the Solar System.

A sample of the astronomer’s ashes are on board NASA’s New Horizons probe, launched toward the outer Solar System in 2006. This tincture of Tombaugh flew past Pluto in 2015 and is now deep into the Kuiper Belt. He’s well on the way to being the first interstellar human, albeit in powder form.

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