Pluto Mission Approved

JimPooley writes "The BBC are reporting here that a budget of $30 million has been approved by the US House and Senate conference committee to develop the mission to Pluto. They also agreed to fully fund future missions to Mars, and gave the go-ahead for a probe to orbit Europa."

A lot of good news here

[A Tin of Fish Steaks]

There's a lot of good news packed into this article. In addition to the Pluto, Mars, and Europa missions, they also approved funding for the Next Generation Space Telescope [nasa.gov]. And they required NASA to keep the Hubble telescope operating until the NGST is in place.

The NGST will have a primary mirror diameter at least twice that of Hubble, be stationed in higher orbit, and be capable of gathering data farther into the infrared spectrum. Pretty neat.

NASA Links

[Ethidium]

Here are the URLS for NASA's web sites on the projects in question:

Posse (Pluto mission): http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/proposed/posse.ht ml

Mars 2005 and beyond:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/proposed/mars20 05 andbeyond.html

Mars Exploration:
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/

Europa Orbiter:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/europaorbiter/

Re:Timing.

[CheshireCatCO]

No, they didn't. The idea that Pluto's atmosphere will freeze out over the next few decades is apparently probably not accurate. The leader of my research group has one of the two competing Pluto mission proposals, and he shared that finding with us a few months ago at a group meeting. Another interesting thing they found was that you can always go to Pluto for a reasonable price, propulsion wise. There are at least one or two gravity assists every year from Venus alone. Jupiter is preferable, of course, but not required.

The really neat thing from my point of view is that no matter which team wins the mission, people in my department will be on the science team.