Alan Stern Quotes on Astronomy & Cosmology (10 Quotes)

Around 20 percent of Kuiper Belt objects have a moon. We think a lot of astronomers are going to be looking now for multiple satellite systems.

Not even Tombaugh and his mentors could have forecast how fascinating their new planet would turn out to be.

We really expect the mission to be transformational. This is the capstone of the original visits to the planets. It takes us 4 billion miles away and 4 billion years back in time.

This is in a very real sense the capstone of the initial reconnaissance of the planets that the United States has led for the world since the 1960s.

The United States is going to go down in history for the initial reconnaissance of the planets.

It provides for us a window 412 billion years back in time to observe the formation conditions of giant planets. This is a little bit about rewriting the textbooks about the outer planets.

It used to be said that Pluto is a misfit. But now we know Earth is the misfit. This is the most populous class of planet in our solar system and we have never sent a mission to this class.

This is the capstone of the initial reconnaissance of the planets, the first mission to the last planet.

We know of 17 objects that could be called planets, most of which are ice dwarfs. So Pluto is typical of what is probably the most populous type of planet in our solar system. It probably mimics other Kuiper Belt objects.

I jokingly say now that New Horizons is the first mission to the nearest example of the last planet.