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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: 4, Interesting) by tangomargarine on Thursday May 18 2017, @08:48PM (6 children)

    by tangomargarine (667) on Thursday May 18 2017, @08:48PM (#511826)

    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.

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  • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday May 18 2017, @09:26PM (4 children)

    by tangomargarine (667) on Thursday May 18 2017, @09:26PM (#511843)

    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.

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  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Friday May 19 2017, @03:43AM

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Friday May 19 2017, @03:43AM (#511993) Journal

    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".

    One of the main goals during the Jupiter encounter was observing its atmospheric conditions and analyzing the structure and composition of its clouds. Heat-induced lightning strikes in the polar regions and "waves" that indicate violent storm activity were observed and measured. The Little Red Spot, spanning up to 70% of Earth's diameter, was imaged from up close for the first time.[88] Recording from different angles and illumination conditions, New Horizons took detailed images of Jupiter's faint ring system, discovering debris left over from recent collisions within the rings or from other unexplained phenomena. The search for undiscovered moons within the rings showed no results. Travelling through Jupiter's magnetosphere, New Horizons collected valuable particle readings.[88] "Bubbles" of plasma that are thought to be formed from material ejected by the moon Io, were noticed in the magnetotail.[90]

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