We’re going to find Marses and maybe Earths out in the solar system’s attic of the Oort Cloud and the Kuiper Belt. Alan Stern Read Quote
New Horizons is a very high-tech, small, roughly 1,000-pound spacecraft with the most powerful battery of scientific instrumentation ever brought to bear on a first reconnaissance mission. Alan Stern Read Quote
There are lots of really interesting little planets out there in the Kuiper Belt, but Pluto’s the only one that’s got all the cool attributes. Alan Stern Read Quote
I tend to think of Pluto and its moons as presents sitting under a Christmas tree. They’re wrapped, and from Earth all we can do is look at the boxes to see whether they’re light or heavy, to see if something maybe jiggles a bit inside. We’re seeing intriguing things, but we really don’t know what’s in there. Alan Stern Read Quote
New Horizons isn’t just visiting Pluto; it’s visiting this entire region. Whatever it finds, this will be a signal moment for planetary exploration – the capstone to our first reconnaissance of the planets of our solar system. Alan Stern Read Quote
We’re in the space exploration business, and the outer solar system is a wild, wooly place. We haven’t explored it very well. Alan Stern Read Quote
I like the planets because they are real places that you can go to and send machines to. Faraway astronomy – galactic astronomy and extra-galactic astronomy – is really cool stuff, but to me, it’s about destinations. Alan Stern Read Quote
No one working as an astronomer is shackled in chains. This is a tremendous profession. There are lots of neat people, and you get to do cool things. If I had to say something negative, it’s that there’s often a whole lot of travel that takes me away from my children. That can be a bummer a lot of times. Alan Stern Read Quote
