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  NASA Pluto orbiter mission under study

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Author Topic:   NASA Pluto orbiter mission under study
Robert Pearlman
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Posts: 42988
From: Houston, TX
Registered: Nov 1999

posted 10-30-2019 04:43 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Robert Pearlman   Click Here to Email Robert Pearlman     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Southwest Research Institute release
SwRI to plan Pluto orbiter mission

NASA has funded Southwest Research Institute to study the important attributes, feasibility and cost of a possible future Pluto orbiter mission. This study will develop the spacecraft and payload design requirements and make preliminary cost and risk assessments for new technologies.

The study is one of 10 different mission studies that NASA is sponsoring to prepare for the next Planetary Science Decadal Survey. The results of these studies will be delivered to the National Academy Planetary Decadal Study that will begin in 2020.

The SwRI-led New Horizons mission — which flew past Pluto and its system of moons and then Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) 2014 MU69, the farthest, most primordial object visited to date — has returned data that has made a compelling case for a follow-up mission.

"We're excited to have this opportunity to inform the decadal survey deliberations with this study," said SwRI's Dr. Carly Howett, who is leading the effort. "Our mission concept is to send a single spacecraft to orbit Pluto for two Earth years before breaking away to visit at least one KBO and one other KBO dwarf planet."

Despite all that New Horizons revealed about the Pluto system and KBOs, it could only begin to explore complex Pluto and its five moons. Additionally, the New Horizons spacecraft carried only a limited payload and many aspects of KBO and dwarf planet science require different kinds instrumentation and the kind of global and temporal coverage that only an orbiter can provide. A Pluto orbiter mission will be designed to answer some of the questions New Horizons discoveries have sparked.

"In an SwRI-funded study that preceded this new NASA-funded study, we developed a Pluto system orbital tour, showing the mission was possible with planned capability launch vehicles and existing electric propulsion systems," said SwRI's Dr. Alan Stern, principal investigator of the New Horizons mission as well as the SwRI-funded study. "We also showed it is possible to use gravity assists from Pluto's largest moon, Charon, to escape Pluto orbit and to go back into the Kuiper Belt for the exploration of more KBOs like MU69 and at least once more dwarf planet for comparison to Pluto."

Blackarrow
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Posts: 3120
From: Belfast, United Kingdom
Registered: Feb 2002

posted 11-04-2019 05:34 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Blackarrow     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
While I welcome news of such a mission and offer my best wishes for success to those who undertake it, I suspect it will all be somewhat academic from my own point of view. I have read elsewhere that I would be 91 at the time of Pluto encounter.

Still, at least we may by then have seen the last of the New Horizons transmissions from Ultima Thule.

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