Beyond Pluto, Orbiting Ceres, and Circling Mars and the Moon

Well, it’s official: New Horizons has the official go-ahead for an extended mission to the object 2014 MU69 that lies along its current path out through the Kuiper Belt. Mind you, the spacecraft was going to head that way anyhow, but now the team can plan for further course correction maneuvers and mission activities as the spacecraft whizzes past this object. That’s great news for the New Horizons team. It’s also a boost for planetary scientists interested in learning more about the objects that populate the Kuiper Belt.

The Dawn mission will continue its mission around Ceres, mapping the surface of this weird little place. In particular, it will monitor any changes as Ceres gets closest to the Sun during its upcoming perihelion passage. It will be interesting to see if the activities that formed those weird deposits on the surface will become more frequent. They do tell us that something is going on under the Cerean surface!

NASA announced the Dawn mission extension, along with continued funding for the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN) mission that’s currently studying the Martian atmosphere, the Opportunity and Curiosity Mars rovers, the Mars Odyssey orbiter, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) at the Moon, and NASA’s part of the European Space Agency’s Mars Express mission. These are all very worthy exploration activities and extend our eyes and ears out to the planets in imaginative and impressive ways.

All in all, the fact that NASA can continue to support a wide range of planetary exploration missions is a good thing. I wish they could spend MORE money on studies of the planets so that we can get a few more missions going, but this is at least a good sign.

Exploring the Solar System

Understanding the planets and other worlds of the solar system is like studying your neighborhood. Sure, you can stay in your house and watch TV or surf the Web, but knowing your neighbors and the houses they live in is important, too. The ongoing study of solar system objects tell is just starting to help us understand the origin and evolution of the planets, dwarf planets, satellites and more. And, the more we learn about “out there”, the better it helps us understand the home planet.

I am sure that future Mars explorers will be grateful for the work we’re doing now to learn about the Red Planet. In my dreams, I see future Pluto explorers doing the same thing, maybe from the deck of a New Horizons station circling that distant planet. Maybe they’ll be sending their own missions to MU69 or other Kuiper Belt Objects in that far distant future. In that dream, they all started on the Moon, learning how to live and work in space and on other worlds. It’s not so far-fetched. Maybe it’ll be our kids and grandkids who do those missions, based on the work we all did and paid for in this time.

Anyway, we can dream. In the meantime, congratulations to the missions with newly extended budgets — I’m sure the teams are ecstatic that they can continue the work they began.