Alan Stern
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...
moon nine months
It'll be the fastest spacecraft ever to Jupiter...13 months after launch. We pass the Moon in just nine hours.
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
opportunity space people
Naming celestial objects is usually done by astronomers and professionals. Other people who are interested in space never get the opportunity to do that kind of thing.
real moon horizon
This is in a real sense the capstone of the initial missions to explore the planets. Pluto, its moons and this part of the solar system are such mysteries that New Horizons will rewrite all of the textbooks.
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.
criteria moon object objects small solar system whether
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,
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.
candy kids
We'll be like kids in a candy shop.
hopes order plans policies protect taken
These policies represented the hopes and the plans of those that were murdered in the Holocaust. They had taken out policies in order to protect their families.
perseverance project represents
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.
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.
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.