PSW 2362 Exploration of Pluto | Alan Stern
Lecture Starts at 21:48
Friday, April 15, 2016
The 85th Joseph Henry Lecture
The Exploration of Pluto
Alan Stern
Principal Scientist, New Horizons
Vice President for Research, Southwest Research Institute
CEO, Uwingu and The Golden Spike Company
Sponsored by Millen, White, Zelano & Branigan, PC
New Horizons is NASA’s historic $723M mission to explore the Pluto system and the Kuiper Belt. The fastest spacecraft ever launched, it left Earth on 19 January 2006. It made the first exploration of the Pluto system, 3 billion miles from Earth, in 2015, culminating with a highly successful flyby inside the orbits of all five of Pluto’s moons on July 14th. The spacecraft carries a sophisticated payload of imagers and other scientific instruments that have revolutionized our knowledge of Pluto and its five moons. This lecture described the history of the mission, the science behind it, the capabilities of the instrument payload, its encounter with Pluto, and the major scientific discoveries by New Horizons to date. The lecture also outlined the proposed New Horizons extended mission to fly across the Kuiper Belt, exploring even further into space beyond the Pluto system.