After Pluto, Where are Spacecraft Going Next?

[MerryBlooms]

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http://news.discovery.com/space/after-pluto-where-are-spacecraft-going-next-150716.htm

Way cool.

[NightWatcher]

1. Maybe they could probe Uranus

[chapdrum]

2. Hopefully to the mothball fleet

so that the money can be better spent on... people not Pluto.

[Fumesucker]

3. What are you going to do with your $2.00?

That's about how much it cost per US resident to send the New Horizons probe to Pluto. Since that is over roughly fifteen years then it comes to about fifteen cents a year.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Horizons

On the other hand the Iraq war cost about $428.00 for every man woman and child on the planet.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026228954

[kentauros]

5. It's thinking like that, that gave the Superconducting Supercollider to

Europe.

You want to spend more money on people? Cut the military budget. Hell, you'd even have money left over to fund NASA several times over.

Oh, and NASA funds more than just space projects. Such as aeronautics research (the first 'A' in their acronym-name.)

[FrodosPet]

6. You do realize they did not just load a bunch of money on the ship and send it into space?

Last edited Fri Jul 17, 2015, 01:04 AM - Edit history (1)

Instead, a lot of smart people had jobs for at least some amount of time designing, building, launching, and controlling the spacecraft. And those people paid taxes. And mankind's knowledge base was increased.

Science hatred: It's not just for RW fundies anymore.

[edbermac]

7. Gaining knowledge of the universe IS money being spent on people.

[MisterP]

8. Pluto actually does fuckall for Earthlings

and no fraudulent Spinoff magazine can change it

of course it's worthy on its own and NASA's hardly the biggest segment of the MIC

[Renew Deal]

10. That's about a shortsighted as it gets

Pluto and space exploration is completely about people. It's about understanding what makes the universe work and eventually making us a multi-planetary species.

[Warren DeMontague]

12. Oh FFS.

Yes, there's absolutely no inherent value in learning about the Universe we inhabit... or benefit to people, for that matter.

[Logical]

14. Lol, deep thinker I see! Nt

[hifiguy]

4. Lots of nothin' between Pluto and the comet belt, then more

on the way to the Oort cloud.

(Astronomy nerd here)

[tavernier]

9. Thanks!!

I was hoping someone would actually answer the question.

[Warren DeMontague]

13. Actually, as I understand it the New Horizons team has 2 different potential KBOs they could target

as a secondary destination - one or the other, of course, they can't do both. But AFAIUI the trajectory could be tweaked to reach either.

http://news.discovery.com/space/after-pluto-where-will-nasas-new-horizons-go-150320.htm

Two contenders remain out of five original candidates found by Hubble, which spent 45 days last summer scouting for targets. Follow-up observations in October narrowed the list to two objects within range of the spacecraft, which has limited fuel for a maneuvering burn, scientists said at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston this week.

The newly named objects are 2014 MT69, a 37-mile (60-km) wide body circling some 44.3 times farther away from the sun than Earth. An encounter with MT69 would occur around New Year’s Day 2019.


“It’s not a terribly bright target and it’s not very big … and it’s quite possibly smaller, if it’s a binary or if other things are going on,” said astronomer and New Horizons team member Simon Porter, with the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo.
The advantage of MT69 is that New Horizons can reach it using less fuel. The encounter also would occur three months sooner than a flyby of the other candidate, known as 2014 MT70.

MT70 is brighter than MT60, and possibly larger, with a diameter of about 47 miles (76 km), so more desirable from a scientific perspective, Porter said.
“We can only go to one of these, so we have to make the decision. MT69 is the front-runner because it’s lower Delta-v (change in velocity). Engineers love that. On the other hand, they kind of hate that it’s dimmer because on approach we might end up using more fuel for final (course) corrections,” he said.

So conceivably there could be additional chapters to that plucky little craft's story. Not as spectacular as pluto, of course, but still interesting.

[hifiguy]

15. Very cool.

I blanked on the name of the Kuiper belt for some reason. I hope neither of those very big rocks ever gets too close to the Earth. The universe is a fascinating place, to be sure.

[greytdemocrat]

11. The Klingon Empire....

[Archae]

16. I hope they start mining the asteroid belt, and the oort cloud.

HUGE amounts of raw materials out there.

[geomon666]

17. Need to find a new home for Neocons.

This one isn't so welcoming any more to them.

[artislife]

18. I did not expect to see that!