Alan Stern Quotes
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If two billion people wanted to watch a robot fly by Pluto, imagine what it will be like when the first humans step on Mars. It'll be the most unifying event anybody could ever put on.
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I think that one of the things that will come out of the New Horizons mission is that the public will take a look, and they won't know what else to call Pluto but a planet - and a pretty exciting one.
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As a researcher, I look forward to being able to do space science in a space environment.
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I call Pluto the harbinger.
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As a planetary scientist, I don't know what else to call Pluto: It's big and round and thousands of miles wide.
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Just speaking for myself, I think the return of people to the Moon has a lot to offer for understanding the formation and evolution of terrestrial worlds; so would the exploration of near-Earth asteroids by people.
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Most of the oceans in the Solar System are deep beneath ice shelves.
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If the Pluto mission was a cat, then it would've been dead long ago because they only get nine lives, and we've had significantly more than nine stoppages and odd twists and turns.
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I expect New Horizons will see more that Hubble cannot see.
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How can an adjective in front of a noun not describe the noun? There are dwarf stars, but they're still considered stars.
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People know a planet when they see one, and I think that's a pretty darn good test, in fact, for planethood.
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In the mind of the public, the word 'planet' carries a significance lacking in other words used to describe planetary bodies... many members of the public assume that alleged 'non-planets' cease to be interesting enough to warrant scientific exploration.
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The solar system is completely wide open. Almost anywhere we go, I'm sure we would learn a lot.
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I actually started my career in planetary science with a master's thesis on Pluto.
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We're in the space exploration business, and the outer solar system is a wild, wooly place. We haven't explored it very well.
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Just because Pluto orbits with many other dwarf planets doesn't change what it is, just as whether an object is a mountain or not doesn't depend on whether it's in a group or in isolation.
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I tend to think of Pluto and its moons as presents sitting under a Christmas tree. They're wrapped, and from Earth all we can do is look at the boxes to see whether they're light or heavy, to see if something maybe jiggles a bit inside. We're seeing intriguing things, but we really don't know what's in there.
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Pluto has a very interesting history, and there is a lot of work that we need to do to understand this very complicated place.
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There was a time when Pluto - which NASA's New Horizons spacecraft at last explored in 2015, a mission I led - was considered the last planet. We now know there are thousands of other - possibly inhabited - planets.
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As a scientist in charge of space sensors and entire space missions before I was at NASA, I myself was involved in projects that overran. But that's no excuse for remaining silent about this growing problem or failing to champion reform.
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CSF and its members believe strongly in the exploration of space of all kinds, including commercial purposes.
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Just because Pluto or comets aren't as big as Jupiter doesn't mean they are not scientifically important - indeed, just the reverse is often true. Sometimes, great things come in small packages.
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We made more than just scientific discoveries... we rediscovered how much people love exploration.
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I can't imagine how many kids around the world will look at pictures of Pluto and think, 'I want to grow up to be a scientist.'