Alan Stern
![Alan Stern](/assets/img/authors/alan-stern.jpg)
Alan Stern
Sol Alan Sternis an American engineer and planetary scientist. He is the principal investigator of the New Horizons mission to Pluto and the Chief Scientist at Moon Express...
candy kids
We'll be like kids in a candy shop.
billion expect miles mission original takes visits
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.
class earth pluto
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.
science dwarves everyday
We're just learning that a lot of planets are small planets, and we didn't know that before, fact is, in planetary science, objects such as Pluto and the other dwarf planets in the Kuiper Belt are considered planets and called planets in everyday discourse in scientific meetings.
halloween moon pluto
It's strictly coincidental that Pluto of course was named for the god of the underworld and we're describing these Halloween moons
exciting outer realizing solar textbooks
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.
advanced flying jupiter last launch ten window
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.