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posted by martyb on Thursday May 18 2017, @07:55PM   Printer-friendly
from the dogged-determination dept.

Scientists, including New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern, met in Houston on April 24th to discuss the possibility of a Pluto orbiter mission. The mission would likely cost $1-2 billion, compared to around $700 million for New Horizons and $467 million for the Dawn mission to Vesta and Ceres. A launch date in the late 2020s is possible, with a 2030 launch coinciding with the 100th anniversary of Pluto's discovery:

[A] Pluto orbiter mission is a long way from becoming reality, Stern stressed. He said he and his fellow researchers aim to mature the concept in time for it to be considered during the next Planetary Science Decadal Survey, a U.S. National Research Council effort that sets exploration priorities for NASA every 10 years. The next decadal survey will start in 2020, finish in 2022 and be published in 2023, Stern said.

Using the Space Launch System (SLS) could reduce travel time compared to the nine-and-half-year journey of New Horizons, but braking would be required to orbit the Pluto-Charon system, increasing the total travel time back to around seven to nine years. Other missions being considered include flybys of more distant Kuiper Belt dwarf planets (Eris, Sedna, etc.) and exploration of Neptune's moons Triton and Nereid, which are likely captured Kuiper Belt Objects. Triton has about a 14% larger radius and 64% more mass than Pluto. Voyager 2 observed 40% of Triton's surface in 1989.


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  • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday May 18 2017, @09:11PM (6 children)

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Thursday May 18 2017, @09:11PM (#511834) Journal

    Pluto probably seems very large if you try to pitch a tent on it to sleep overnight. But maybe not so easy to precisely navigate to at high speed and after a long journey where navigational error accumulates. Certainly not like a gas giant.

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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by bob_super on Thursday May 18 2017, @09:24PM (4 children)

    by bob_super (1357) on Thursday May 18 2017, @09:24PM (#511840)

    Considering that they didn't go splat on Pluto, nor missed it by a million miles, having designed the probe long ago,
    considering also the amazing orbits we can get out of a decade-old probe, going between Saturn and its rings,
    considering that other probe which traveled well over a decade before orbiting a comet,
    considering that those people who are really good at orbital mechanics now have computers 100 times more powerful than they did then,
    considering that they're talking about a takeoff in 5 to 10 years, which usually means 15+,
    I wouldn't worry about NASA/ESA's ability to achieve the expected orbit around pretty much any body, as long as nothing hard-fails nor uses imperial units...

    • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday May 18 2017, @09:44PM (3 children)

      by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Thursday May 18 2017, @09:44PM (#511848) Journal

      Given how many things can go wrong. It's amazing it works at all.

      My post was really to highlight what an accomplishment it is. The navigation. Achieving orbit. After a long trip. At high speed. I didn't mention the harsh conditions. How do you even make machines work under such conditions, and the launch conditions.

      It would be good if we could get rid of imperial units. But a large part of the country is ignorant and proud of it. I have trouble believing many Americans could adapt to metric.

      --
      People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
      • (Score: 2) by butthurt on Thursday May 18 2017, @11:29PM (1 child)

        by butthurt (6141) on Thursday May 18 2017, @11:29PM (#511892) Journal

        > It would be good if we could get rid of imperial units.

        Be careful what you wish for:

        The gallon (/ˈɡælən/) is a unit of measurement for liquid capacity in both the US customary units and the British imperial systems of measurement. Three significantly different sizes are in current use: the imperial gallon defined as 4.54609 litres, which is used in the United Kingdom, Canada, and some Caribbean nations; the US gallon defined as 231 cubic inches (3.785 L), which is used in the US and some Latin American and Caribbean countries; and the least-used US dry gallon defined as 1⁄8 US bushel (4.405 L).

        -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_gallon [wikipedia.org]

        • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday May 19 2017, @01:52PM

          by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Friday May 19 2017, @01:52PM (#512169) Journal

          At least we don't measure velocity in atto parsecs per micro fortnight.

          --
          People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
      • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday May 19 2017, @12:09AM

        by kaszz (4211) on Friday May 19 2017, @12:09AM (#511911) Journal

        NASA went metric in 2007 afaik since the loss of the Mars orbiter hurt a lot.

        As for the mission. Interesting but the question is what will we gain from this?

        A mission that would give key data is to send a human to live on the moon for a year to see the physiological changes that occurs when the gravity is only partial 1G but not zero. Preferably using a twin pair. As it is right now, there's is no clue at all to this. No data. The cost can be kept reasonable. SpaceX is about to send two persons on a moon flyby in 2018 for a cost comparable to a ISS crewed mission. Landing shouldn't be that expensive. The cost is likely to be in creating a underground habitat needed to dodge radiation.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 18 2017, @11:54PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 18 2017, @11:54PM (#511907)

    I'd solve it all by using double instead of float. That would blow the minds of those cowboys at NASA. Doubles mother fucka, DOUBLES.