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Last Post 10/21/2016 10:35 AM by Christina Cohen

pluto mission

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nicky l

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10/21/2016 9:34 AM
do you think we'll ever land a robotic spacecraft on pluto since new horizons' successful flyby last year shows its a strange world?

Christina Cohen

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10/21/2016 10:35 AM
I hope so! But, it isn't likely to happen soon. There are a number of difficulties with a Pluto lander, not to mention the length of time it takes to get there (New Horizons was launched in 2006 and took 10 years to get to Pluto) and the long time for communications. We're still having problems successfully landing probes on Mars and Pluto would be significantly harder. Additionally, there are so many places in our solar system that we'd like to investigate (including more on Mars) and not a lot of money to do so. So, NASA and ESA have to pick and choose which places to explore first.