We saw the heart of Pluto 10 years ago—it’ll be a long wait to see the rest
Pluto must host an internal heat source to avoid freely freely freezing, which researchers did not wait until the arrival of New Horizons.
New horizons have revealed Pluto as a mysterious world with frozen mountains and very smooth plains.
Credit: NASA
So what is the Ocean of Pluto like? What is the thickness of Pluto’s glacial caps? Are the alleged cryovolcanoes of Pluto still active today? And, what secrets are hidden on the other half of Pluto?
These questions, and more, could answer with an orbiter. Some of the scientists who have worked on new horizons have developed an overview of a conceptual mission to Orbit Pluto. This mission, called Persephone for Pluto’s wife in classical mythology, was not subject to NASA as a real proposition, but it is worth illustrating the difficulties not only to reach Pluto, but to maneuver in orbit around a dwarf planet so far from the earth.
Nuclear is the answer
Persephone’s initial outline published in 2020 provided for a launch in 2031 on the Block 2 rocket of the NASA space launch system with an additional centaur kick scene. Again, this is not a realistic calendar for such an ambitious mission, and the rocket selected for this concept does not exist. But if you assume that Persephone could start on a super heavy SLS rocket inflated in 2031, it would take more than 27 years for the spaceship to reach Pluto before slipping in orbit in 2058.
Another concept study led by Alan Stern, also a principal researcher of the New Horizons mission, shows how a future Orbiter Pluto could reach its destination in the late 2050s, assuming a launch on a SLS rocket around 2030. The concept of Stern, called another more distant object.
Persephone and Gold Standard both assume that a spaceship linked to Pluto can get a gravitational boost from Jupiter. But Jupiter left the alignment from 2032 to the early 2040s, adding a decade or more to the journey time for any mission leaving the earth during these years.
It took new horizons nine years to travel from the earth to Pluto, but the spacecraft was much smaller than an orbiter should be. Indeed, an orbiter must transport enough power and fuel to slow down the approach of Pluto, allowing the low gravity of the dwarf planet to capture it in orbit. A spaceship traveling too fast, without enough fuel, would go to Pluto, just like New Horizons.
