Delaying Our Visit To The Last Planet

O.F. Fascist writes: "Story over at Space.com about how the first NASA mission to Pluto might get cancelled for a variety of reasons." Sounds like the reasons at play here are good, though -- "reliable transport required" applies to multi-year interplanetary journeys, too. (And what are we looking for on Pluto again?)

Comments

Some info

[Bryce]

I worked on a team that did one of the concept definition for this mission (I designed the propulsion system), for TRW's proposal to build this spacecraft. (Guess we didn't get it, eh?)

Pluto/Kuiper Express (PKE) was to be one of three JPL solar system exploration missions. The other two include Europa Orbiter (intended to determine the existance of a subsurface ocean), and Solar Probe (intended to determine the origin of the solar wind). PKE's purpose was to image Pluto and Charon (Pluto's moon) and a Kuiper Belt object. EO's biggest challenge is it's complex orbit insertion. SP, of course, has to deal with an intense thermal environment.

PKE's principle challenge was to reliably conduct an autonomous encounter navigation after spending 8 years travelling out there. The craft would be zipping past Pluto at a good clip, and clicking a few pictures (for later transfer back to earth) would be tricky - gotta have the camera pointed in just the right directions at just the right time.

The reason autonomy is necessary, is that at Pluto, the round-trip time for a beam of light to travel between Pluto and ground control is 8 hours, but the entire Pluto encounter only lasts a few hours.

Another problem, mentioned in the article, is that finding a launch vehicle with sufficient performance to get enough mass (a few hundred kg's) going on an accurate trajectory, is pretty tricky.

I think it'd be a pretty cool mission, although I can understand why NASA may prefer to direct their funds towards other projects that would return larger amounts of results for less risk. I hope this doesn't mean Europa Orbiter or Solar Probe are also in danger of cancellation.

What are we looking for??

[gammatron]

(And what are we looking for on Pluto again?)

That type of statement is the reason NASA's budget has been cut so drasticly over the years, which directly led to the high-profile failures of some of the recent Mars missions. We're not looking for anything in particular; the whole point of a mission such as this one would be pure exploration - we don't really know what to look for, so you have to begin somewhere. It's true that there will never be (in our lifetime, at least) any commercial value from the exploration of Pluto, but does that mean we shouldn't go there? If that kind of test were applied to all matters of exploration and research, we'd still be in the dark ages.
--

And this is why pure science goes...

[gbowland]

It's impossible for there not to be something interesting on Pluto. We'd find out about the history of the solar system, whether Pluto was formed in the original solar system or captured, a million questions could be answered and a million new questions could be asked.

Science shouldn't always have a direct application or use. It's their because once in a while it creates something amazing, that changes everything and affects everyone. You can't always directly apply science to solve a need. Sometimes you don't know a need was there until it has been satisfied.