The ashes of #ClydeTombaugh, the discoverer of #Pluto, are contained within the #NewHorizon spacecraft. While it would be poetic hyperbole to claim a human being has now traveled outside the solar system, perhaps poetry is not so bad a place to start. The emulated remains no longer contain the DNA of our species, but the law of the conservation of matter dictates that matter is never created nor destroyed, which means that some of the elements that made up Clyde Tombaugh, now lancing billions of miles away from our home, remain in that powdery grey residue—elements which first came from space and are now returning to it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/07/science/space/reaching-pluto-and-the-end-of-an-era-of-planetary-exploration.html

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