NASA Chooses Pluto Mission

Posted by michael on Sunday December 2, 2001 @09:47AM from the midnight-train-to-georgia dept.

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.

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Pluto mission I, II, III, IV, etc by LazyDawg · 2001-12-02 10:02 · Score: 5, Interesting

We'll probably only ever get to see the one Pluto Probe get launched in the next 20 years, which is a shame, because redundancy is the best way to reduce cost/benefit ratios in a NASA mission.

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?

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