New Horizons Pluto Mission - Alan Stern (SETI Talks)

In 2006 NASA launched a sophisticated robotic explorer to make the first reconnaissance of planet Pluto and its moons, three billion miles from the Sun. That spacecraft is called New Horizons. The principal investigator of New Horizons, Dr. Alan Stern, will describe the mission, it's full objectives, and will describe the new class of planets that Pluto represents.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• alan Stern
• new horizons
• seti institute
• nasa
• pluto
• swri

[stevo632]

that was really enjoyable! thankyou! wasn't too hard to follow along either. Some of these talks can get quite complex, and i tend to tune out.

[setiinstitute]

@stevo632 Hi Stevo, yes we try to supply the most science content we can but still make them approachable for everyone, sometimes we deliver more science, sometimes less, but we try to walk that fine line and we have fun doing it!

[Zurround100]

this is 2 weeks in a row since i read about the new possibly life supporting planets discovered by the hubble deep field in the newspaper but seti just talks about moon rocks and pluto since then.

[setiinstitute]

@Zurround100 Hi Zurround, we have a talk coming on March 8 (it will appear here online in April) about exoplanets and it will touch on the latest discoveries. Hope you can tune in for that one! We will also have more Kepler talks in the future too.

[HughFromAlice]

If you're not that interested in New Horizons my guess is you WILL be after this talk. Inspiring, persuasive & great to see repeated acknowledgement of the team.

As a non-scientist it seems the planet-dwarf planet schema is v conservative way of looking at things. Wouldn't a 2 group schema be better for now? MGOs-main group objects 150K (predicted) Kuiper Belt members etc. NMGOs- subclasses of Giants, Terrestrials, Dwarfs (asteroids etc). So NH is important as a mission to MGOs! Hᴜɢʜ….TU..ツ

[FlowBikeCollective]

What time do signal from sophisticated robotic explorer need to travel to earth? someone plz THX!!

[Kg277]

What if they make the spacecraft crash into something?

[laurele861]

Kablamo, it's not that Stern "doesn't know" of the IAU vote; it's that he, along with many other leading planetary scientists, disagrees with it. That vote remains controversial and should not be considered fact but one view in an ongoing debate. Unfortunately, Wikipedia does not give an evenhanded presentation of both sides.

Great job, Alan! I love this!

[Sowff]

Very interesting and informative lecture, Alan! Nice job and good luck!

[sachibbsr]

Spectacular stuff !!! I hope to be around when New Horizons reaches Pluto.

[kdum8]

Great talk and nice to get an update from the PI himself. Thanks!

[7goliath7]

I'm in the wrong profession... I deeply enjoy this..