NASA Chooses Pluto Mission 139
CheshireCatCO writes: "NASA announced on Thursday that it has selected Alan Stern's Pluto mission proposal, named New Horizons, for phase B study and (hopefully) eventual launch in 2006. Alan is himself one of the top experts on Pluto, and his team consists of many other leaders in the field. It should be a good mission, if only they get the money for it." CNN has a story with some background on the mission. NASA is having a hard time deciding whether the Pluto-Kuiper Express is actually going to launch or not.
Re:Hmm (Score:4, Insightful)
Putting a Hubble type scope on the satellite wouldn't serve any purpose. As it is, the Hubble lenses can see very far away. Putting it somewhere else in our solar system is pointless, because it wouldn't change the range of the telescope, nor would it change it's field of view. It will still see everything as we can see it here (relatively). And it would take significantly longer to relay information back to Earth for us to look at.
Re:Hmm (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Hmm (Score:1)
Re:Hmm (Score:1)
Pluto sucks (Score:1, Funny)
Studying Donald Duck would be much more enlightening.
Ice on Charon? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ice on Charon? (Score:1)
Re:Ice on Charon? (Score:2)
Re:Ice on Charon? (Score:2, Interesting)
But what about when we want to get into the van Oort cloud? We'll need water to make cheap rocket fuel as well as for life support systems.....
Re:Ice on Charon? (Score:2, Informative)
Pluto is worth visiting too! (Score:3, Informative)
But we've already had half a dozen or so successful Mars probes. We know quite a lot about it. We know nothing, by comparison, about Pluto. Isn't it worth just one little probe to go have a look?
Additionally, if I understand the problem, is that Pluto is near its closest approach to the Sun (and thus the Earth) at the moment. If we don't do the mission now, it'll be much more difficult when Pluto has moved further away in 2030 or so.
Re:Pluto is worth visiting too! (Score:1)
Re:Ice on Charon? (Score:1, Troll)
I think it would be a much better use of our money to get rid of poverty, famine, disease, suffering, etc. from our planet.
Re:Ice on Charon? (Score:1)
You mean like the trillions that the US alone has spent on government programs since The New Deal? Yeah, that's worked a treat, hasn't it?
Re:Ice on Charon? (Score:3, Interesting)
Plenty of water? (Score:1, Offtopic)
Re:Plenty of water? (Score:1)
I also thought it was established that the Kazon were a bunch of bloody idiots.
Re:Ice on Charon? (Score:5, Funny)
Water ice is made up of hydrogen and stupidity? You learn something new every day. Thanks, Slashdot! ;)
Re:Ice on Charon? (Score:1)
Re:Ice on Charon? (Score:1)
NASA needs to better allocate its funds (Score:2, Troll)
--
My Favorite Slashdot Poll of All Time [slashdot.org]
Re:NASA needs to better allocate its funds (Score:3, Interesting)
Programs such as the ISS and the space shuttle give NASA a chance to figure out what to expect on these long term missions (medically with their astronauts and physically with their equipment), not to mention allow them to increase their skills as engineers (we don't want a Mars mission's shuttle to explode somewhere in between).
There are many, many benefits to the space shuttle and ISS.
Re:NASA needs to better allocate its funds (Score:1)
[yes, I got the joke; my response was to egg it on]
Re:NASA needs to better allocate its funds (Score:2)
Re:NASA needs to better allocate its funds (Score:1)
something awful, but they are part of NASA's mission.
s/money//g
Re:NASA needs to better allocate its funds (Score:1)
Propulsion (Score:2, Interesting)
Does anyone know how long it will take to reach Pluto? I would think a few years, but of course that's just a guesstimate.
Re:Propulsion (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Propulsion (Score:1)
Re:Propulsion (Score:2)
Wormface & Co. had a secret hidden base on Pluto.
Re:Propulsion (Score:1)
Pluto mission I, II, III, IV, etc (Score:5, Interesting)
The odds for a long duration mission like this to the far reaches of our solar system are pretty slim, and once you make one Pluto Probe it is a lot cheaper to make *many* Pluto Probes.
What do you think the odds are there will be even a Pluto II?
Re:Focus Needs to be on Basic Science and Technolo (Score:1)
Pluto mission I is boring enough (Score:2, Interesting)
Kuiper belt is a lot more interesting though. NASA is downplaying it possibly because they will fit the craft mainly for pluto-charon system and won't be able to do much about the belt.
If I had a say ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:If I had a say ... (Score:1)
The ONLY benefit of doing a pluto mission is that its the furthest "planet" from the Earth (at certain points in its orbit).
We need to concentrate on either the Moon or Mars, possibly the moons of Jupiter to establish truely beneficial exploration.
Pluto, in my opinnion, at this point in time is a worthless rock. NASA should spend their money on more beneficial studies.
Re:If I had a say ... (Score:1)
Re:If I had a say ... (Score:1)
You mean, the same way VA Linux ran for years as a very open company until it couldn't afford it, and changed its name to VA instead?
You mean, the same way Apache has been picked up by a corporation and the publically available version is an old version of the codebase that the commercially available version is. (Recalling from memory...can't find the info anywhere.)
You mean, the way that slashdot, Sourceforge, Freshmeat, kuro5hin, Linux.com and all the rest of the OSDN network is run by corporation that recently purged their namesake from its name?
If NASA was privitized, every new technology it contracts for development could be monopolized, and advancements in the industry would be under constant threat!
Every company involved in technology advancement that I've ever heard of has patented their inventions, and not all of them license those. Those that do often do so at high prices, stifling derivitive works. This is why we have copylefts for those advancements made by civilians.
It's a precedent set by Edison. He hired hundreds of inventors and patented all their results. Those results weren't often used until afterr the patents ran out, as Edison charged a bundle for licenses.
I'd really prefer this not to happen to the one majorly funded civilian organization that freely gave us things like Mylar and aerogels.
Re:If I had a say ... (Score:1)
Just imagine... a Beowulf cluster of these!
heh, couldn't resist)
Re:If I had a say ... (Score:1)
Turns out that a large number of smaller dishes over a large range is roughly equivalent to one much larger dish, in terms of being able to tell where a signal came from.
Re:If I had a say ... (Score:1)
How do you know there isn't one already there?
Re:If I had a say ... (Score:2, Interesting)
In fact, if we did put a scope on the far side of the moon, we'd probably need to build into it some way to block off it's lens and shield all it's sensitive components for when it was in direct sunlight. This would actually probably be the most expensive feature about such a scope: needing to close up for protection so often means a lot of wear and tear over thime.
Re:If I had a say ... (Score:1)
That would only be once every 28 days instead of every few hours the hubble is now circling around the earth.
Re:If I had a say ... (Score:1)
Re:If I had a say ... (Score:1)
If you put the observatory in a crater, that would extend the night. There's no atmosphere, so as long as the sun isn't shining directly on the optics, you're OK. However, there's still infrared interference; you'd want to have a double (or more) wall anyway. If you used a typical slitted dome, you could do observations away from the sun even in the daylight.
So really, the thing could be used to some extent every day of the year.
Re:If I had a say ... (Score:1)
Yep: one of the real benefits of being farther out in space: minimal to no scattering of light.
---If you used a typical slitted dome, you could do observations away from the sun even in the daylight.---
Good point! Though there still is the control issue: what would be the cheapest and best way to send signals back to earth, considering that half the point is our sheilding the scope from interference in the first place?
Re:If I had a say ... (Score:2)
you could put a "satellite" dish just over the "horizon". Since there is no atmosphere on the moon, you should be able to reach the Earth as long as you have a line of sight to it. Better yet, as seen from the Moon, the Earth doesn't move. Then you just run a cable, or set up microwave relays out to the observatory.
I wonder if we would need to send people up there from time to time though for maintanance
Re:If I had a say ... (Score:1)
Granted, such a set-up would be pretty cool to have. However, we could plan such a mission any time we like. A Pluto mission has to happen now, or else it won't happen for another 600 years. (Or more likely, we'll be sending actual people there by then.)
Re:If I had a say ... (Score:2)
Now, the reason that the far side is more cratered is not that it was hit more, more than likely. It's that this side was resurfaced more recently than much of the cratering.
Re:If I had a say ... (Score:1)
This is a common astronomical misunderstanding. The far side of the moon is not "Dark" anymore than the side facing us is always "Light." The same side of the moon always faces the earth because it rotates in just the right way (it is "locked" to our orbit). But the sun hits it all over. Think about it. During an eclipse, when the moon blocks out the sun from our perspective, which side of the moon is having light shone on it?
How can you be an expert on Pluto? (Score:1)
I can understand that we can be fairly sure about atmosphere / crust composition from spectral analysis, but surely "leading theorist" would be a more correct term for those of us who study that which we have never sampled?
Re:How can you be an expert on Pluto? (Score:2)
But Alan Stern's word is not the final word on anything Pluto related. He, and any of us, is capable of being wrong. But he's known as more knowledgable than almost anyone else, making him an expert.
Obligatory flamebait... (Score:4, Funny)
Ask any priest, rabbi, reverand, etc, etc, etc...
:)
AOL Timewarner can afford to finance it god damn.. (Score:1)
An Expert on Pluto? (Score:1, Redundant)
In that case we're almost all experts on Pluto, because almost nothing is known about it.
Re:An Expert on Pluto? (Score:2)
PKB? (Score:1)
I had always thought that PKB stood for "Pot, Kettle, Black."
Re:PKB? (Score:1)
Pot, Kettle
Black.
Argue noisly at night.
(616) 532-8423"
flyby of uranus or neptune possible? (Score:2)
Is there someone who can explain the trajectory? There must be some sort of "window", (presumably, we're about to miss it) which won't reopen for hundreds of years, right?
Flybys (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Flybys (Score:1)
Re:Flybys (Score:1)
Ever give a Mylar baloon to your parents for their Anniversary?
Thanks, Apollo.
Demonstrable (Score:2)
Look, I said demonstrable benefits. Sure, Apollo had benefits, but try to convince Joe Taxpayer that it was worth all that money. If we had spent that money on some long-term goal, like fully-reusable orbiters or a permanent space station, we'd have something you could point to and say, "that is where your money went". Instead, we went with a project that created billions of dollars worth of use-once hardware, and wasn't the basis of any further accomplishments. A few useful but unsexy technical breakthroughs don't make up for that.
If you want laceless shoes and non-stick cooking, then I guess Apollo was a success. But if you want a solid foundation for further space exploration, Apollo was a total waste of money.
Re:Flybys (Score:1)
Re:flyby of uranus or neptune possible? (Score:4, Informative)
It turns out that you can go to Pluto any year (or probably any month) that you like. Larry Esposito (who had the competing proposal, which was regarded as extremely good, too) shared this with me a few months ago. Apparently, a Venus assist can get you to Pluto, and are availible a lot. But New Horizons is using a Jupiter assist that won't happen nearly as often. I'd guess that the next chance would be roughly 12 years later, when we're more or less aligned the same way again.
Oh no, mars is better ! (Score:2)
Importance of Pluto/Charon (Score:5, Insightful)
Besides which, every time we investigate a new world we learn wonders. Water on Europa! Hydrocarbons on Titan! Rings around Neptune and even (chuckle) Uranus! Young worlds cracked and not fully reformed, worlds of live volcanoes, worlds whose geological processes always seem to come back and illuminate our own, either its current dynamics or its history.
Computer models are not substitute for real experience. And the only source of reale experience is another real world. We have a limited number of these close at hand, and it would be foolish not to explore them all.
As the most distant "world"-sized body Pluto likely holds many secrets to the early history of the Solar System, and to forces at work on our own world during its formation. If nothing else we should investigate it for being the only other dual planet worth the name in the Solar System (besides, of course, Earth-Luna.)
Re:Importance of Pluto/Charon (Score:2, Insightful)
Would it? I mean sure, plutos a curious little thing, but except for the aforementioned deep-space launch site, what else is there? Resist quoting JFK to me right now, please. And remember it's getting farther away...
A Pluto mission, or any new "deep" (can I get another troll, please?) mission will perpetuate NASA for 10 more years. You either like that, or you dont. Do we give 'em one more chance, fellas and gals? Whaddya say?
Re:Importance of Pluto/Charon (Score:5, Insightful)
Imrdkl: Would it?
OF COURSE IT WOULD! Consider all the folks who think the Apollo missions were a foolish waste of time. Well, from Apollo we learned that the Moon was once molten, that it has no metallic core, and that its crust is similar to that of Earth. All these things have informed the history of Earth, from which the Moon was probably knocked off in a chance encounter early during her coalescence.
From Mars missions we have learned enough to recognize Martian meteorites, thus getting free extra samples for analysis.
From Jupiter and the other outer planets we have learned that geology is much more complex and unpredicatable than we once thought; in my childhood books these worlds were always described as cold, rocky, silent, and gray, kind of the way Pluto is still described. (You'd think we'd learn.)
The thing about Pluto is we only think we know what we'll find there. So far we've always been wrong about that. Outer Solar System objects are the only direct, unsullied links we have to conditions as they were before the inner planets formed and all the components got mixed up and distilled. Even so one must wonder; was Pluto once molten? Was Charon knocked off of it as our Moon once was, or was it just captured? The similirity between Earth/Luna and Pluto/Charon is itself enough to warrant investigation. What seems like an incredible chance event might be more likely than we think, making the "Rare Earth" hypothesis less "rare." The key is that we don't know what we'll find. One thing we can say with great confidence is that it will actually be a surprise if it is a boring cold sphere of inert frozen crap like my circa 1970 Jr. Science book said.
Re:Importance of Pluto/Charon (Score:1)
But I am willing to invest in the continued careful search for more knowledge. (Although it's a crapshoot just to get a good flyby, at that distance, yes?)
Re:Importance of Pluto/Charon (Score:2)
WTF are you talking about? They knew roughly what sort of *SURFACE* to expect from the Surveyor landing probes. Have you even seen a pic of the Eagle? The landing pads weren't 8' deep... I'm not even sure they were 8' across. The contact probes may have been 8' long, but that was to give a few seconds warning before touchdown.
Re:Importance of Pluto/Charon (Score:1)
I still say a pluto mission is a crapshoot, tho. Accelerating via Jupiter instead of the Venus doesn't make me feel good, either. It feels political.
Re:Importance of Pluto/Charon (Score:3, Insightful)
The need to launch Pluto-Kuiper Express soon (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:The need to launch Pluto-Kuiper Express soon (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, it seems that we're moving away from this prediction with more current models of Pluto's atmosphere. It does not seem likely that the atmosphere freezing out is a real concern, anymore.
Re:The need to launch Pluto-Kuiper Express soon (Score:2, Funny)
*sigh* I have the sinking feeling that by the time a probe is approved and launched, Pluto will be unfrozen again.
Just for the record... (Score:1, Informative)
If the funding holds out - we'll get there, on time and under budget.
Europa instead. (Score:1)
Re:Europa instead. (Score:2)
However, being small doesn't make it uninteresting. Witness all the missions that flew to comet Halley. Or to Borelly. And to the asteroid Eros. Pluto (and the one or two other KBOs that New Horizons will visit) are examples of a population of bodies we have not yet been able to study. They provide valuable clues about the formation of out solar system and about its overall present nature.
In short, if you do a modicum of research, you come to realize that we are not going there because it is called 'planet'. We're going there because it is an interesting object.
On the other hand, the Europa mission probably won't fly even if New Horizons does not either. The current Europa mission is just too expensive. Congress has put a price cap on total outer solar system mission expenses of $1 billion. Right now, we can't do a Europa orbiter for less than $1.22 billion (figures from Colleen Hartmann, the new director of the Office of Space Science at NASA). We can't get Europa either way, so don't make it sound like it's even a choice. Perhaps in 5 years Europa will be more feasible, but it isn't now.
Who gives a shit about Pluto (Score:2, Funny)
Good thing they're working with JHU/APL (Score:1)
more secrets... (Score:1)
Wrong planet (Score:1)
Web Site (Score:2)