It is almost impossible to believe,
but tomorrow marks the 10th anniversary of New Horizons’ historic
Pluto flyby. To commemorate the anniversary and reflect on what has been
learned about Pluto in the decade that has passed, the Universities Space
Research Association’s (USRA) Lunar and Planetary Institute (LPI) is holding a
weeklong conference titled “Progress in Understanding the Pluto System: Ten
Years Since Flyby” from July 14-18 at the Johns Hopkins University Applied
Physics Laboratory (JHUAPL), mission headquarters, in Laurel, Maryland.
The four-and-a-half-day conference offers an option to attend virtually, which I will be doing this week, and reporting here on the talks. Topics to be addressed include Pluto’s volatile ices, its geology and geophysics, its climate history, its atmosphere, Charon’s geology and craters; the comparative planetology of dwarf planets and Kuiper Belt Objects; history of the New Horizons mission; future exploration of Pluto and the Kuiper Belt; the origin of Pluto and its moons, and more.
On the afternoon of Thursday, July 17, presentations will address possible return missions to Pluto, including Persephone, a proposed Pluto orbiter and Kuiper Belt explorer, and the Gold Standard Mission, also a Pluto orbiter proposal and extended Kuiper Belt exploration mission.
While these are currently only in the concept stages, they matter because the New Horizons flyby raised more questions than answers, leading scientists to recognize the need for a follow up orbiter mission.
A Pluto day, one rotation of the planet on its axis, takes 6.4 Earth days. As a flyby mission, New Horizons did not have the time to study Pluto for a full rotation, as the spacecraft could not brake and slow down to observe the planet. Therefore, only one hemisphere of Pluto was imaged and studied in high resolution. The other hemisphere was imaged only on approach in low resolution, meaning less is known about it. An orbiter would reveal the secrets of that hemisphere as well as provide additional data about the side of Pluto that was explored in high resolution.
While the current political climate may not be conducive to spending money on new planetary missions, this could very well change with a different administration, so it is important to develop and study possible plans for a follow up mission.
Here, you can find a program of the conference talks along with links to the abstracts of those talks.
