Pluto mission approved by Congress

The New Scientist ^ | 17:16 09 November 01 | Will Knight

[vannrox]

The US Congress has approved new funding for a mission to Pluto as well as continued funding for other probes to explore Mars and Jupiter's ice-covered moon, Europa. The funding plans are part of NASA's 2002 budget.


The Bush administration's proposed budget, released in February 2001, originally included no funding for the $30m Pluto mission. NASA scientists say it should reveal crucial information about the history of the solar system.


This is also the last opportunity to visit the planet for a decade. A journeying probe must use the gravity of Jupiter in order to reach Pluto - and Jupiter's orbit would take it out of position if the mission were delayed any longer.


Scientists also feared that Congress would slash funding for future Mars missions.


"The strong support for space exploration in the Congress is very welcome," said Louis Friedman, Executive Director of The Planetary Society. "Especially at a time when there are so many other budget pressures.s"

Signs of life

The Pluto-Kuiper Express probe will launch in 2006 and take 10 years to arrive at Pluto. The probe will also examine objects in the Edgeworth-Kuiper belt of "ice dwarfs" or minor planets beyond Pluto.


"You are not likely to have an opportunity to explore this region of space more than once a lifetime," Apostolos Christou of the Armagh Observatory in Northern Ireland told New Scientist.


The Europa Orbiter, scheduled for launch in 2008, will use radar equipment to measure the thickness of surface ice and look for signs of an underlying ocean. Previous observations indicate that the subsurface ocean may exist, and scientists believe that primitive live could potentially exist there.


NASA's Mars Odyssey is currently orbiting the Red Planet. Two NASA surface rovers are scheduled for launch in 2003.

[vannrox]

A very interesting read.

[alethia]

Excellent post.

Suggestion -- New home for the Al Qaeda network?

[Brett66]

It will be interesting to see the last planet in our solar system get mapped. I think our telescopes will be so good by 2016 that we'll already have pretty good pics by the time it gets there.

[NovemberCharlie]

As far off as Pluto is, we'd need an awfully big teloscope to do that.

[Random Access]

Shela Jackson Lee thought they meant Mars, and Barney Frank thought we were going to explore Uranis. Ted Kennedy said he did not care about some dumb cartoon dog, let's have one more drink before breakfast.

[Brett66]

The Keck telescope has just finished testing it's basic interferometer configuration of a 85 meter baseline. With this kind of power it should be able to make out basic features on the surface of Pluto whenever they decide to take a look at it. The European Observatory's interferometer, with outrigger telescopes, will have an equivalent aperature of 200 meters! This telescope will be in full operation around 2003. It should yield some impressive images of Pluto, far surpassing anything the Hubble could do. They'll probably get around to imaging Pluto around 2005. These huge telescopes could yield excellent images of anything in our solar system. It will be fascinating to watch the results come in the next few years.