Exploration of Pluto

One of the many early concepts for a mission to Pluto was to send a Mariner Mark II spacecraft. This was later ruled out in favor of a smaller, less expensive spacecraft similar to the "Pluto 350" concept.

In May 1989, a group of scientists and engineers, including Alan Stern and Fran Bagenal, formed an alliance called the "Pluto Underground". It was named in homage of the Mars Underground, another group of scientists that successfully lobbied for the restart of missions to Mars, following the lack of such since the Viking program. The group started a letter writing campaign which aimed to bring to attention Pluto as a viable target for exploration.[9] In 1990, because of pressure from the scientific community, including those of the Pluto Underground, engineers at NASA decided to look into concepts for a mission to Pluto. At the time, it was thought that the atmosphere of Pluto would freeze and fall to the surface during winter, and so a lightweight spacecraft was desirable, as it would be able to reach Pluto before such an event would occur. One of the earliest concepts was for a 40-kilogram spacecraft that would reach Pluto in five to six years. The idea was shortly scrapped, however, because of the infeasibility of miniaturizing scientific instruments aboard such a spacecraft to that size.[10]

A diagram of Pluto 350.

An artist's impression of Pluto 350

Another mission concept, known as Pluto 350, was developed by Robert Farquhar of the Goddard Space Flight Center, with Alan Stern and Fran Bagenal of the Pluto Underground, who both served as study scientists for the project. Pluto 350 aimed to send a spacecraft, weighing 350 kilograms, to Pluto.[11] The spacecraft's minimalistic design was to allow it to travel faster and be more cost-effective, in contrast to most other big-budget projects NASA were developing at the time, such as Galileo and Cassini. Pluto 350, however, would later become controversial among mission planners at NASA, who considered the project to be too small and too high-risk. An alternative plan which was considered at one point was to send to Pluto a configuration of the Mariner Mark II spacecraft, which would weigh 2,000 kilograms and cost US$3.2 billion, in sharp contrast to Pluto 350's $543 million cost.[10] While both projects competed for approval, Pluto 350 was more favored by NASA mission planners, who were starting to adopt smaller missions such as Mars Pathfinder and NEAR Shoemaker.[11]

In October 1991, the United States Postal Service released a series of stamps commemorating NASA's exploration of the Solar System.[12] The series featured a stamp for all planets, displaying an image of the planet and highlighting an associated spacecraft which was sent to it. The stamp for Pluto, however, depicted a featureless sphere, presented with the phrase "not yet explored" in place of the name of a spacecraft. The stamps were unveiled in a ceremony at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Two scientists who attended the event, World Space Foundation president Robert Staehle and JPL scientist Stacy Weinstein, were inspired by Pluto's status on the stamp, such that they started to inquire about the feasibility of sending a spacecraft to Pluto.[13][14] Engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, inspired by the "Not Yet Explored" status of Pluto, also started to put forward ideas about a mission to Pluto.[15][16]

In August 1992, Staehle telephoned Pluto's discoverer, Clyde Tombaugh, requesting permission to visit his planet. "I told him he was welcome to it", Tombaugh later remembered, "though he's got to go one long, cold trip".[17]

That year, Staehle, with the help of JPL engineers and students from the California Institute of Technology, formed the Pluto Fast Flyby project. The mission heralded the same ideology as the Pluto 350 concept: small in size and cost-effective in scope, so that the spacecraft would be able to get to Pluto faster and be affordable to develop and launch. Described as a "radical" mission concept, the mission would see two spacecraft being sent to Pluto. Both spacecraft were to weigh only around 35-50 kilograms each (including 7 kg worth of scientific instruments), and the project would cost less than US$500 million to develop, excluding launch costs.[13] Described by Staehle as a "faster, better, [and] cheaper" approach than the Pluto 350 and Mariner Mark II projects, it caught the attention of then-NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin, who ordered all work on both Pluto 350 and Mariner Mark II to cease and shift all resources to the new Pluto Fast Flyby project instead.[11]

During the development of Pluto Fast Flyby, however, there were multiple concerns from both NASA, Administrator Goldin and the mission's development team. As research and development into the mission progressed, the project's size, scope, and budget all expanded. Additionally, morale among the team and personnel working on interplanetary missions was low following the loss of the Mars Observer spacecraft in August 1993. Alan Stern would later cite that event as a significant factor towards the low enthusiasm for the Pluto Fast Flyby project.[10]

The spacecraft were intended to be launched using Titan IV rockets, which would have cost US$400 million each, thus raising the budget to over US$1 billion.[11] Because of growing budget constraints, the dual-spacecraft concept was scrapped in favor of sending a single spacecraft to Pluto. The project was still too expensive, however, in the eyes of Administrator Goldin.[10] Alan Stern, as a compromise, reached an agreement with Russian Space Research Institute scientists in Moscow, in which Pluto Fast Flyby would be launched atop a Proton rocket, saving NASA over US$400 million in launch costs. Alec Galeev, head of the Russian Space Research Institute, reached the agreement with Stern by stipulating that Russia would include an atmospheric probe that would impact Pluto after studying its atmosphere with a mass spectrometer.[18] The proposal was forwarded to Administrator Goldin, but he vetoed the proposal, recommending instead that the JPL look into the feasibility of Pluto Fast Flyby being launched aboard a smaller rocket, such as the Delta II.[11]

Concept art for the Pluto Kuiper Express; the last iteration of the original Pluto mission concepts, eventually cancelled in 2000.

During the course of the late 1990s, a number of trans-Neptunian objects were discovered, confirming the existence of a Kuiper belt. Interest in a mission to the Kuiper belt arose such that NASA instructed the JPL to re-purpose the mission as not only a Pluto flyby, but also a Kuiper belt object (KBO) flyby. The mission was thus re-branded as the Pluto Kuiper Express, after briefly being billed as Pluto Express prior to the revision. The weight of the spacecraft was raised again, this time to 175 kilograms, and NASA allowed further liberty with the project's budget.[11]

However, Goldin later decided that Pluto Kuiper Express was of low importance, and thus cut funding to the project drastically. Eventually, despite official selection of scientific instruments and the appointment of several investigators, then-Science Mission Directorate Edward J. Weiler ordered the cancellation of the entire Pluto and Kuiper belt mission in 2000, citing growing budget constraints, which had plagued the project since its inception in 1992. At the time of cancellation, the projected costs surpassed $1 billion.[10][19]

The cancellation of Pluto Kuiper Express angered some of the space-exploration scientific community, which led to groups, such as The Planetary Society, lobbying NASA for either a reboot of the Pluto Kuiper Express or a restart of a mission to Pluto. Internal divisions within NASA, including its Scientific Advisory Council, also voiced support for a Pluto mission.[10] In response to the backlash caused by the cancellation of Pluto Kuiper Express, it was decided to inaugurate a new class of missions that would fit between the big-budget Flagship Program and the low-budget Discovery Program, creating a compromise for missions such as the former Pluto Kuiper Express, which proved to be too expensive for the Discovery Program. A competition was held, in which NASA would select a mission concept to fund as part of the first mission of the New Frontiers program.[19]

A Pluto orbiter/lander/sample return mission was proposed in 2003. The plan included a twelve-year trip from Earth to Pluto, mapping from orbit, multiple landings, a warm water probe, and possible in situ propellant production for another twelve-year trip back to Earth with samples. Power and propulsion would come from the bimodal MITEE nuclear reactor system.[20]

The Fusion-Enabled Pluto Orbiter and Lander was a 2017 phase I report funded by the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program.[3][35] The report, written by principal investigator Stephanie Thomas of Princeton Satellite Systems, Inc., describes a Direct Fusion Drive (DFD) mission to Pluto. A fusion reactor would be used to send a 1000 kg orbiter and lander to the Pluto system in only four years (more than twice as fast as New Horizons).[36]

Global Aerospace Corporation presented a Pluto lander concept titled "Pluto Hop, Skip, and Jump" at the 2017 NIAC Symposium in Denver, Colorado.[37][2] The concept describes an entrycraft that would brake using the drag of Pluto's thin but highly spread-out atmosphere. Once on Pluto's surface, the vehicle would exploit Pluto's low gravity to hop between sites using propellant. This is similar to NASA's Triton Hopper concept for exploring Neptune's largest moon Triton.

Another proposal submitted to NASA in 2020 is an orbital probe of the Pluto & Charon system, named "Persephone".[38][39]

It would be powered by 5 RTGs, contain several high-resolution cameras, and orbit for 3 years. A key goal would be to determine whether there is a subsurface ocean on Pluto. Estimated cost would be $3 billion.