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NASA
An artist's conception shows NASA's New Horizons probe at Pluto.
Few folks involved in the space effort span as wide a spectrum as Alan Stern: The 53-year-old planetary scientist is working to get himself and other researchers onto suborbital space planes to do science — and he's also heading up the science team for one of NASA's farthest-flung space efforts, the New Horizons mission to Pluto.
New Horizons is due to reach the dwarf planet by 2015, putting Pluto back in the international spotlight. And by that time, Stern may well have taken a trip to outer space himself — perhaps in XCOR Aerospace's Lynx rocket plane or Virgin Galactic's VSS Enterprise. We'll talk about Pluto as well as the pioneering efforts to commercialize space travel during "Virtually Speaking Science," at 10 p.m. ET Sunday on BlogTalkRadio and in the Second Life virtual world.
It's unusually fitting that Sunday's show features a chat with Stern, who is a former NASA associate administrator and currently serves as associate vice president for research and development for the Southwest Research Institute's Space Science and Engineering Division. Sunday happens to mark the 81st anniversary of the Lowell Observatory's announcement of Pluto's discovery.
Some folks have gone so far as to celebrate March 13 as "Planet Pluto Day." This year, the Greenwood Space Travel Co. in Seattle will get a jump on the holiday by holding its annual pro-Pluto rally at 2 p.m. PT Saturday, one day before the anniversary. I'll be there, of course, talking about the state of the planet search and about my book, "The Case for Pluto."
Maybe I'll see you at the march protesting the International Astronomical Union's putdown of Pluto and other dwarf planets. "It's not a long march — just down the street and back," Justin Allan, store manager at Greenwood Space Travel, told me.
Even if you're a Pluto-hater, you'll be welcome. The beauty of the Pluto protest is that it doesn't take itself too seriously. I wish the same could be said of everyone who's been involved in the planethood debate.
If you can't make it to Seattle on Saturday, please tune in for Sunday's show. To get ready for the program, I e-mailed Stern a few questions about his twin interests, Pluto and private spaceflight. Here's an edited version of the quick Q&A:
Cosmic Log: You're involved in so many different angles of the space frontier ... is there a unifying principle that ties all of them together?
Alan Stern: Well, I work on what I am interested in and where I think I can make a difference.
Q: What's the status of the New Horizons mission? It sounds as if the spacecraft is back in hibernation, but I'm sure that doesn't mean that the science team is hibernating as well....
A: New Horizons is doing very well — we're just now crossing the orbit of Uranus and in great shape from every perspective. We're even planning the details of the Pluto system encounter already.
Q: How has the scientific perspective on Pluto changed in the past year, or in the past five years? Some folks, such as Caltech astronomer Mike Brown [who discovered the dwarf planet that led to Pluto's downfall], say only a very few scientists are still arguing to have Pluto put in the planet category. I'm guessing that's not your perception.
A: Mike knows that's not so.
Q: Do you think developments in the Dawn mission (for example, the Vesta observations expected this year) will have any effect on the scientific discussions about small bodies in the solar system? Any dramatic results that may come to light?
A: Hard to tell. Maybe, but Dawn is visiting much smaller words than Pluto — Vesta and Ceres could together fit inside Pluto about 15 times!
Q: On commercial space, how do you think the recent suborbital research conference changed the landscape for spaceflight? How do you see the next year shaping up on the commercial front, for suborbital as well as orbital ventures?
A: The next year will be very important, because many of the suborbital companies will be testing their vehicles in flight and even making missions to space.
Q: What do you think will come out of the current deliberations involving NASA and the would-be providers of commercial space taxis for the International Space Station?
A: Several viable commercial crew capsules will be the most likely development, along with launchers than can be man-rated for these capsules to fly on.
Q: What are your thoughts on the decadal report for planetary science. You're a planetary scientist who had to struggle to get your mission to Pluto funded, as well as a former NASA official who had to struggle with planetary mission cutbacks ... what strategy would you suggest for moving forward with the missions on the table for the next decade? Do you think the decadal survey came up with the right strategy?
A: It was a great effort by the planetary community. Unfortunately, owing to the increasing costs of missions and overrun pressures, the next decade looks bleaker than the past one.
How do your opinions line up with Stern's? Tune in via the Web on Sunday to chat with Stern, co-host Robin Snelson of the Space Studies Institute and yours truly. And, oh, by the way ... Happy Pluto Day!
Join the Cosmic Log community by clicking the "like" button on our Facebook page or by following msnbc.com science editor Alan Boyle as b0yle on Twitter.
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I don't think I can catch the sunday night show, but I would very much like to catch a synopsis of it somewhere, cosmic log would be a great place..hint,hint....There is no doubt in my mind Alan Stern will continue to be someone worth listning too, in terms of space commercialization. My impression is that he is level headed and aware of the political landscape. I have no idea what it takes to secure funding for nasa mission but I can bet it takes a lot more than a bunch of phone calls and emails. I am eager to see images of plutos hexagon anomoly and any analysis of a possible composition and or magnetic field. Or if it is just some sort of optical inclusion. Again, I expect pluto to have a very interesting mineral makeup and Horizons provides a lot of answers and those answers lead us, naturally to a heck of a lot more questions!!! It does not seem to me that there are as many Americans interested in the space biz as there were in the seventies, I hope that is a bad observation on my part. A good mystery will do much to garner more interest, but it should not be a contrived one, the media has jaded us to that approach to anything scientific anymore. A headline article about possible hexagonal structures on pluto and saturn would get little attention, but toss in a real photo and see what happens....Oh well, no matter what, we won't abandon our lead in space, congress just isn't thinking right now, in a way that can be the best time for americans to bolster their commecial ambitions...while the regulators are off cutting up some other pie!!
I'm definitely looking forward to this interview. Alan Stern is singlehandedly doing more than anyone else, governments included, to bring the best aspects of the Star Trek future of exploration and space travel to reality.
Kudos to the Greenwood Space Travel Co. in Seattle for continuing the Pluto protest every year! I wish I could be there, but it's a long trip from New Jersey! Best wishes for good weather, and please know that I am with you in spirit. You can find more about Pluto's planet status and worldwide efforts to reinstate it on my Pluto blog, now at its new site, http://laurelsplutoblog.blogspot.com .
Pluto IS a planet, pure and simple. Always and forever.
God it's still a long wait to see Pluto. Three more winters to bear, I'll be over 60 by then, one of our 2 dogs
will probably be dead or so old it can't function normally. More disasters will have taken place around the world, millions will be dead and born by then..people will be taking trips into space...the list goes on.
Here is a quote from my 1945 World Book Encyclopedia, "PLUTO, ninth planet in distance from the sun, was discovered in 1930. .... Pluto's perid of revolution is 249.17 earth years, and it is thought to have four or five times the earth's mass."
We now know a lot more about Pluto. It doesn't have four or five times the earth's mass, instead it has 0.0059 earth's mass. Pluto just isn't a full blown planet.
The last statement is a matter of debate. I recommend you listen to Stern and buy Alan Boyle's book. According to the geophysical planet definition, it is a full blown planet because dwarf planets are simply a third class of planets in addition to terrestrials and jovians.
Is Laurel male or female? And what is Kornfeld? Who made that up? Is that like CORNFIELD?
Laurel, ask yourself this question: If the actual mass and diameter of Pluto had been known when it was discovered in 1930, would astronomers then have considered it a planet? The case of Ceres parallels that of Pluto. Discovered in the right part of the solar system, called a planet, discovered to be tiny, other similar objects (asteroids) discovered, and finally reclassified.
The demotion of Ceres was just as wrong as the demotion of Pluto. 19th century astronomers' telescopes were not powerful enough to resolve Ceres into a disk, so no one knew it is spherical and therefore a small planet. Today, we have images that definitively show it is round, meaning it is a complex world shaped by its own gravity and most certainly not an asteroid. Every other body in the asteroid belt except for Vesta and Pallas, which are borderline cases due to their complexity, is tiny and shaped only by its chemical bonds. Pluto is well beyond the threshhold for being spherical or in the state known as hydrostatic equilibrium. That's why it too is a small planet, much more complex and distinct from asteroids or the majority of Kuiper Belt Objects. In fact, both Ceres and Pluto may harbor subsurface oceans that could host microbial life. The debate over how to classify Pluto did begin with its discovery because astronomers had trouble resolving it into a disk. Some thought it was a moon of a giant planet, but no such planet was ever found. Therefore, my answer is, even if Pluto's mass and diameter had been known in 1930, the same debate would have taken place and would continue to take place to this day.
We dont like it when our planets are taken away from us.
Long live Pluto !!!!!!!!!
The 9th planet of our solar system
happy birthday pluto! i didn't realize it was your birthday until i was searching for pictures on the internet of you. you are the best planet in the solar system, small but mighty, responsible for transformation and you even have a metal and a disney character that share your name, no other planet can say that, can they. no other planet can even compare to your archetypal power!!! happy 81st. love,
karey
This argument about Pluto is the craziest argument I ever heard. Dwarf people are still counted as real people, aren't they? Dwarf planets should still be counted as real planets, too. There are many different kinds of planets, and dwarf planets are simply just one more kind of planet. Let's hear it for the all the dwarfs, God bless them! They deserve equal recognition, too. - RC
The term "planet" is a definition. It conveys a certain meaning. If Kuiper belt objects are to be included in the definition, then there are hundreds if not thousands of additional "planets". I think there is a wonderful symmetry to having 4 rocky major planets and 4 gas giant major planets. Eight planets in all. Then there are the minor planets. The rocky asteroids with Ceres as the largest and the icy Kuiper belt objects, with Eris as the largest. (Sorry, Pluto doesn't even make it as the largest of the Kuipers.
This is incorrect. Eris is not the largest object in the Kuiper Belt, as originally thought. In November 2010, Eris occulted a star, and astronomers were able to get a more accurate measurement of its size. They found it is marginally smaller than Pluto though more massive. Including certain Kuiper Belt Objects as planets will not add hundreds or thousands of planets. The majority of KBOs are tiny and shapeless, like the majority of asteroids in the asteroid belt. Those objects that are large enough and massive enough to be spherical are rounded by their own gravity, and this makes them complex worlds with geology, weather, and layering into core, mantle, and crust, just like the larger planets. Ceres, Pluto, Haumea, Makemake, Eris, and any other object large enough to be spherical are small planets. Not distinguishing these complex worlds from simple asteroids is simply bad science.
"New Horizons is due to reach the dwarf planet by 2015, putting Pluto back in the international spotlight. And by that time, Stern may well have taken a trip to outer space himself"
Since when is a flight to very low earth orbit a "trip to outer space"?
Yikes! Alan Stern thinks I say things that I know aren't true?
I might actually be wrong about things from time to time, but I don't say things I know to be not true. And the statement that very few scientists are still arguing that Pluto should be reinstated is simply true. That's the reason the topic never comes up at scientific meetings or discussions; almost every else has moved on.
Mike, we all remember that brawl that broke out at last year's Lunar and Planetary conference.... Texas Rangers had to wade in to break that one up. The noogie I got from Guy C. still hurts. It was a sad, sad day for astronomy. ;-P
Cheers! ~Michael (AFM*Radio / Astronomy.FM)
A planet should be something that you can stand on. From that definition, let's get rid of Venus, Saturn, Jupiter, and uranius
B