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.
Related Stories
Astronomers are still hoping for another mission to Pluto, or perhaps another Kuiper belt object:
A grassroots movement seeks to build momentum for a second NASA mission to the outer solar system, a generation after a similar effort helped give rise to the first one. That first mission, of course, was New Horizons, which in July 2015 performed the first-ever flyby of Pluto and is currently cruising toward a January 2019 close encounter with a small object known as 2014 MU69.
[...] Nearly three dozen scientists have drafted letters in support of a potential return mission to Pluto or to another destination in the Kuiper Belt, the ring of icy bodies beyond Neptune's orbit, Singer told Space.com. These letters have been sent to NASA planetary science chief Jim Green, as well as to the chairs of several committees that advise the agency, she added. "We need the community to realize that people are interested," Singer said. "We need the community to realize that there are important, unmet goals. And we need the community to realize that this should have a spot somewhere in the Decadal Survey." That would be the Planetary Science Decadal Survey, a report published by the National Academy of Sciences that lays out the nation's top exploration priorities for the coming decade.
New Horizons 2 was already cancelled due to a shortage of plutonium-238, which still reportedly persists. One proposed target was 47171 Lempo, a trinary system. The trans-Neptunian dwarf planets Eris, Haumea, Sedna, Orcus, Salacia, Makemake, and 2007 OR10 (the largest known body in the solar system without a name - with an estimated 1,535 km diameter) have all been discovered since 2002. Several of these TNOs have moons and Haumea was recently found to have a ring system.
Now that Cassini is dead, most new NASA missions are focused on Mars and Jupiter, leaving the solar system's "ice giants" relatively unstudied:
SwRI team makes breakthroughs studying Pluto orbiter mission
A Southwest Research Institute [SwRI] team using internal research funds has made several discoveries that expand the range and value of a future Pluto orbiter mission. The breakthroughs define a fuel-saving orbital tour and demonstrate that an orbiter can continue exploration in the Kuiper Belt after surveying Pluto. These and other results from the study will be reported this week at a workshop on future Pluto and Kuiper Belt exploration at the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences meeting in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Associate Vice President and planetary scientist Dr. Alan Stern leads the SwRI study. The team first discovered how numerous key scientific objectives can be met using gravity assists from Pluto's giant satellite, Charon, rather than propellant, allowing the orbiter to change its orbit repeatedly to investigate various aspects of Pluto, its atmosphere, its five moons, and its solar wind interactions for up to several years. The second achievement demonstrates that, upon completing its science objectives at Pluto, the orbiter can then use Charon's gravity to escape the system without using fuel, slinging the spacecraft into the Kuiper Belt to use the same electric propulsion system it used to enter Pluto orbit to then explore other dwarf planets and smaller Kuiper Belt bodies.
"This is groundbreaking," said Stern. "Previously, NASA and the planetary science community thought the next step in Kuiper Belt exploration would be to choose between 'going deep' in the study of Pluto and its moons or 'going broad' by examining smaller Kuiper Belt objects and another dwarf planet for comparison to Pluto. The planetary science community debated which was the right next step. Our studies show you can do both in a single mission: it's a game changer."
Previously: Return to Pluto?
A Return to Pluto and Other Solar System Targets
Related: New Horizons Captures the Farthest Image From Earth Ever Made
New Horizons Spacecraft Approaches 2014 MU69; OSIRIS-REx Nears 101955 Bennu
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 18 2017, @08:13PM (10 children)
... to make more free software and free content to support freedom in the world.
(Too bad Mozilla has squandered so much of the Google / Yahoo windfall.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 18 2017, @08:29PM (3 children)
Why should anyone pay you to code when you people freely admit you would code for free? You negotiated your pay to be zero and now you want to whine about it? No you shut the fuck up and you get back to work. More free software, produce the code, right now.
(Score: 3, Touché) by tangomargarine on Thursday May 18 2017, @08:59PM
Those bastards, doing charity work to make the world a better place! Fuck 'em!
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 18 2017, @09:01PM
I'm sure you know the difference between free as in speech and free as in beer, stop acting dumb
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday May 18 2017, @09:37PM
Don't egg them on. The more they work on Firefox, the more it sucks.
Now, a proper boot manager would be nice. You wouldn't believe how much of a pain in the ass it is to set boot partitions when dealing with multiple operating systems. A-HEM. Get crackin' boys!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 18 2017, @08:31PM (2 children)
Space exploration is also important. I wish we did that instead on fighting each other.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 18 2017, @08:54PM
Well said! (original AC)
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday May 18 2017, @09:18PM
Are you trying to hurt the profitability of the military industrial complex? Isn't that anti-American?
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(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday May 18 2017, @08:51PM
It could pay a bunch of extra UX experts to more thoroughly fuck up ALL the Mozilla product interfaces. Indefinitely. :P
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday May 18 2017, @09:13PM
Imagine what even one billion dollars could have done for LibreOffice a few years back. That might put a dent in some proprietary office suites.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 18 2017, @11:47PM
I heard Trump doesn't take a salary for his President gig. I guess it's one of those things you put on your cv when you're looking for a better gig.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 18 2017, @08:18PM (10 children)
It just seems such a terribly high price when we have to spend $TRILLIONS on national defense to shoot at noobs in pickup trucks in far away countries to protect $OUR_WAY_OF_LIFE. Namely, that the Lord Jesus is the One True Savior.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday May 18 2017, @08:23PM (2 children)
If we could put maneuvering thrusters on the SLS's first stage to allow it to drop and destroy a target in the Middle East, we could afford missions to all of the known dwarf planets.
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(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday May 18 2017, @08:35PM
While such thinking sometimes seems superficially appealing, it is ultimately counterproductive. Whatever means we would use to kill all those people might also affect OUR oil which is under THEIR sand*. If war is the means of US Policy to get OUR oil from THEIR land, then US policy planners should consider that war may be counterproductive to the policy goal of getting OUR oil from THEIR land. So I wonder if there are other ways to get them to give us OUR oil?
Or maybe we could become less dependent on oil. And coal. But this seems more like something for the Germany 85% renewables topic.
If we were ever to become largely energy independent, it would have global consequences.
* Someone here must see the problem with this assertion about ownership of the oil
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 18 2017, @08:36PM
Boy, now that sound expensive. Reckon we could cut some taxes and free up gun laws instead. How's them apples, boy?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by tangomargarine on Thursday May 18 2017, @08:48PM (6 children)
I mean, I'm a huge space nerd and all, but this mission sounds pretty marginal for the price. Don't we at least get a flyby of Jupiter or Saturn? Asteroids are interesting I guess but not $2b interesting.
Does a Pluto flyby realistically get us anything over just swinging by Ceres, or Neptune/Uranus? It's just a small, frigid ball of rock, and it's way the hell out there.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday May 18 2017, @09:26PM (4 children)
Plus, since the summary doesn't outright state it, New Horizons already did a flyby and mapped all of Pluto's surface (plus whatever other instruments they threw at it) in 2015.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday May 18 2017, @10:42PM (3 children)
Not all of its surface:
http://www.space.com/32756-pluto-global-map-most-comprehensive-yet.html [space.com]
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 18 2017, @11:51PM
OMG U MEAN THERES MORE ICE??? SEND ROCKETS ASAP
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday May 19 2017, @02:47PM (1 child)
What part of this article is supposed to support your claim?
-1 Not In Given Reference
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday May 19 2017, @10:55PM
https://img.purch.com/h/1400/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5zcGFjZS5jb20vaW1hZ2VzL2kvMDAwLzA1NS8xNTkvb3JpZ2luYWwvcGx1dG8tY29tcGxldGUtbWFwLWFwcmlsMjkuanBn [purch.com]
There's the map from the article. As you can see, some parts in the southern hemisphere have not been mapped, and the features facing the spacecraft as it approached were mapped in greater detail.
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(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday May 19 2017, @03:43AM
New Horizons also got you [wikipedia.org] a grainy image of Asteroid 132524 APL, and imagery and data from Jupiter and the Galilean moons, including a volcanic plume over Io. Now that the Pluto data is in, New Horizons will fly by (486958) 2014 MU69 [wikipedia.org], becoming the first spacecraft in history to fly by an object that was discovered after the spacecraft was launched. That will take place on Jan. 1, 2019. It will also "conduct more distant observations on an additional two dozen objects".
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(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday May 18 2017, @08:41PM (10 children)
I don't even want to think about what it takes to send an automated robot to Pluto, and the technical problems of braking it without breaking it. It seems like the craft would need to skim the planet and form a very long elipse that brings it back by the planet again, each time braking some more. The number of maneuvers, the speed, the precision all make my head spin.
And this is all done with something far away that nobody will ever see. Sure, we get data back. But to us on Earth, this is all happening in a black box. No real time remote control. Nothing we'll ever see with our eyes, or probably with any telescope. No 2nd chances.
I'm sure Pluto is vastly more massive than the spacecraft. But Pluto seems small.
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(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday May 18 2017, @08:45PM (7 children)
I'm sure Pluto is vastly more massive than the spacecraft. But Pluto seems small.
Indeed, perhaps even dwarf-like.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday May 18 2017, @09:11PM (6 children)
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)
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)
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.
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(Score: 2) by butthurt on Thursday May 18 2017, @11:29PM (1 child)
> 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
At least we don't measure velocity in atto parsecs per micro fortnight.
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(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday May 19 2017, @12:09AM
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
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.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday May 18 2017, @09:24PM (1 child)
The missions to Ceres and 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko have shown that it can be done. And well. Ion engines have changed the game.
The biggest risk of the New Horizons mission was the possibility of unseen small debris in orbit destroying the craft. That risk has been cleared away.
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(Score: 3, Funny) by choose another one on Friday May 19 2017, @09:28AM
> small debris in orbit destroying the craft. That risk has been cleared away.
Wait, Pluto has cleared its orbit? Yay! Promotion to the big-boys planet league awaits...
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday May 18 2017, @09:41PM (3 children)
An orbiter for Pluto is cool and all, but I'd really prefer Neptune first. Especially, as pointed out in the summary, with Neptune's moon Triton probably being from the same class of objects as Pluto.
Planet 9, if and when it is found, is so far away it will be a challenge to reach. A New Horizons clone can't do it. Might need a century or more to reach Planet 9 at the same speed as New Horizons, and its power supply won't last that long. We could send a far smaller probe at a much faster speed, but then it will only be able to do a flyby, not enter orbit.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday May 18 2017, @09:46PM
Neptune's moons would likely be more interesting than Neptune itself.
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(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday May 18 2017, @11:02PM
It seems like NASA will always prefer Jupiter and Saturn missions over even one new mission to Uranus and Neptune (Voyager 2 visited both). You can get a spacecraft to Jupiter substantially quicker, and Europa and Enceladus are priority targets due to the possibility of life under the surface.
Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer [wikipedia.org] and Europa Clipper [wikipedia.org] launch in 2022.
Obviously we have to take a deep breath and find Planet Nine first (making sure it exists and locating it). The good news there is that the James Webb Space Telescope will (hopefully) launch next year, providing far better imagery of Planet Nine and any of its moons than other telescopes could.
Maybe it would be easier to insert an orbiter at Planet Nine than at Pluto due to Planet Nine's larger gravity. Increased velocity of the spacecraft could counteract that though.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 19 2017, @12:00AM
We need to think outside the box guys. While you punks bicker about Neptune and Uranaus, the rest of the Universe is sitting there waiting for us to discover it. In a few short billion years we could understand the cosmos. Neptune's moons will seem so pathetic in hindsight. Give up!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 19 2017, @12:27PM
Using the Space Launch System (SLS) could reduce travel time compared to the nine-and-half-year journey of New Horizons
Faster how? For inter-planetary travel you have three options: Transfer orbit, Transfer orbits plus gravity assist and simply powering through (aka. impulse speed, Mr. Zulu).
New Horizons did the gravity assist thing, and SLS won't have the fuel to power through, so how would SLS reduce travel time?
(There may be better options for gravity assist, but those depend on the positions of moons and/or planets, and SLS doesn't have the power to move those either).