Alan Stern Quotes (30 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've learned that the view of four inner rocky planets and four outer gas giants and one misfit Pluto is wrong. Now we understand Pluto's context.

Our result suggests other bodies in the Kuiper Belt may have more than one moon. It also means planetary scientists will have to take these new moons into account when modeling the formation of the Pluto system.

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.

Exploring Pluto and the Kuiper Belt is like conducting an archaeological dig into the history of the outer solar system, a place where we can peek into the ancient era of planetary formation.

The payload that we're flying is a much more advanced payload than we could have flown, for example, in the last Jupiter launch window ten years ago.

Whether or not an object has a moon is not part of the criteria that we've considered, because so many small objects in the solar system have moons,

We're realizing just how much there is to the deep, outer solar system. I think it's exciting that textbooks have to be rewritten, over and over.

We'll have to divide our attention four ways instead of two,

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.

It's really going spectacularly well. The whole approach to testing a spacecraft is to walk before you run.

In a real sense, this is not just a 4 billion-mile journey, but also a journey 4 billion years back in time.

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'll be the fastest spacecraft ever to Jupiter13 months after launch. We pass the Moon in just nine hours.

Just as a Chihuahua is still a dog, these ice dwarfs are still planetary bodies. The misfit becomes the average. The Pluto-like objects are more typical in our solar system than the nearby planets we first knew.

Im calling the discovery of the two new satellites the first scientific result of New Horizons.

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.

Some of Clyde's ashes are on their way to Pluto today.

I ... was not comfortable with launching without backup power. I've been working on this for 17 years ... Two or three days doesn't mean a hill of beans.

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.

Our result suggests that other bodies in the Kuiper Belt may have more than one moon as well,

SWUIS operated flawlessly. We think we've got some great data in our pocket including some spectacular data on the mapping of the moon.

Some people think its 20 years off and some people think its five years off. No one really knows when Pluto's atmosphere will snow out and collapse.

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

I will say that this has been our project mascot for a long time, this little ground-down pencil. And it represents perseverance to get this project under way, to get it built, to get it launched and now to get it to Pluto.

Just on a visceral level, the fact that Pluto has a whole suite of companions will make some people feel better.

It took us more years to get the mission beyond the Washington beltway than it will take to cross the entire Solar System.