The head of NASA, members of Congress, and Elon Musk want to make Pluto a planet again. Will Trump do it?

NASA administrator Jared Isaacman just urged the president to ‘make Pluto great again’—but Trump doesn’t have the power to do it alone.

A panoramic view of Pluto’s icy mountains and flat ice plains. [Photo: NASA]

President Donald Trump first ran on a campaign to “make America great again.” Whether he’s been successful in doing so (or if America was ever great to begin with) is hotly contested—but even as the work continues on our home planet, one NASA leader is encouraging Trump to set his sights even further.

Newly appointed NASA administrator Jared Isaacman said he thinks Pluto should regain the planetary status that it controversially lost 20 years ago.

“I 100% support President Trump making Pluto great again,” Isaacman told Daily Mail in a new interview. Isaacman cited Pluto’s discovery by Clyde Tombaugh, the farmboy-turned-astronomer who first spotted Pluto from a Kansas observatory in 1930, as one reason it ought to be recognized as a planet.

“I think we owe it to everyone from Kansas and all their great contributions to astronomy and aerospace to rightfully restore that discovery to a planet,” Isaacman said.

When Pluto got demoted

Pluto may have been discovered by an American, but that doesn’t mean President Trump controls its planetary status. 

That power falls to the International Astronomical Union (IAU), which decided two decades ago that Pluto doesn’t meet the criteria to be a planet.

It may orbit the Sun and be large enough to form a nearly round shape—two of the three qualifications for planetary status, according to NASA—but it “has not been able to clear its orbit of debris,” the IAU’s 2006 resolution stated.

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