Julius
Aug 5 2021, 05:34 PM
New Horizons mission built and managed by APL revealed up close a new class of planets out in the outer solar system and a glimpse into what could be out there. Pluto turned out to be more interesting than ever imagined. Alan Stern and his team did a great job to humanity in persevering with the mission. His interest with suborbital science and commercial spaceflight should perhaps allow him to push for a Pluto orbiter, kuiper belt mission by private enterprise?!It would be a first.
JRehling
Aug 5 2021, 06:21 PM
That has been under consideration!
https://astronomy.com/magazine/2019/10/return-to-plutoOp Ed, the wonderful thoughts about Pluto science are tempered by thoughts of how old anyone reading this will be by the time the mission would conclude.
Julius
Aug 6 2021, 07:49 AM
Question remains would private enterprise be willing to fund such science missions perhaps share the costs with NASA as Space X is currently doing with human spaceflight. I would suspect that private initiatives would want to fund profit making missions and not doing a purely science mission!