Donald Savage
Headquarters, Washington                 Nov. 29, 2001
(Phone: 202/358-1547)

RELEASE: 01-235

NASA SELECTS PLUTO-KUIPER BELT MISSION FOR PHASE B STUDY

     NASA has selected a proposal to proceed with Phase B 
(preliminary design studies) for a Pluto-Kuiper Belt (PKB) 
mission, intended to explore the most distant planet in the 
solar system. The mission will also explore the Kuiper Belt 
beyond Pluto, a source of comets and believed to be the 
source of much of Earth's water and the simple chemical 
precursors of life. 

The scientific value of this mission is highly dependent on a 
2006 launch that achieves a flyby of Pluto well before 2020. 
In order to ensure this launch date, NASA has established two 
conditions that must be successfully met at the conclusion of 
Phase B. 

First, the mission must pass a confirmation review that will 
address significant risks such as schedule and technical 
milestones and regulatory approval for launch of the 
mission's nuclear power source. Second, funds must be 
available. Congress provided $30 million in fiscal 2002 to 
initiate PKB spacecraft and science instrument development 
and launch vehicle procurement; however, no funding for 
subsequent years is included in the administration's budget 
plan.

The mission, called New Horizons: Shedding Light on Frontier 
Worlds, is led by Principal Investigator Dr. S. Alan Stern of 
the Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colo. He will lead 
a team including The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics 
Laboratory, Laurel, Md.; Ball Aerospace Corp., Boulder, 
Colo.; Stanford University, Palo Alto, Calif.; and NASA's 
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., and Jet 
Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

"Both proposals were outstanding, but New Horizons 
represented the best science at Pluto and the Kuiper Belt as 
well as the best plan to bring the spacecraft to the launch 
pad on time and within budget," said Dr. Ed Weiler, Associate 
Administrator for Space Science at NASA Headquarters, 
Washington. Each team conducted a three-month concept study 
including management, science content, technical aspects, 
cost and schedule for a complete mission, including launch 
vehicle, spacecraft and science instrument payload. 

The proposal outlines how the team would undertake the major 
science objectives defined in the January 2001 Announcement 
of Opportunity. The spacecraft would use a remote sensing 
package that includes imaging instruments and a radio science 
investigation, as well as spectroscopic and other 
experiments, to characterize the global geology and 
morphology of Pluto and its moon Charon, map their surface 
composition and characterize Pluto's neutral atmosphere and 
its escape rate. 

Pluto, the smallest planet, is actually a Kuiper Belt Object, 
a class of objects composed of material left over after the 
formation of the other planets. Pluto has large quantities of 
ices of nitrogen and simple molecules containing carbon, 
hydrogen and oxygen that are the necessary precursors of 
life. Given Pluto's weak gravity, these ices would be largely 
lost to space if Pluto had come close to the Sun. Instead 
they remain there as a representative sample of the 
primordial material that set the stage for the evolution of 
the solar system as it exists today, including life.

"Visiting Pluto and other Kuiper Belt objects would be like 
visiting a deep freeze containing samples of the most ancient 
material in our solar system, the stuff that all the other 
planets including Earth were made of," said Dr. Colleen 
Hartman, Solar System Exploration Director in NASA's Office 
of Space Science. "But the most exciting thing about going to 
an unexplored planet is what we may find there that we're not 
expecting." 

NASA will work with Dr. Stern to further define the costs and 
to finalize the design of the spacecraft and its 
accommodation of the instrument sets. Stern, as Principal 
Investigator, bringing together teams from academia, industry 
and NASA centers, will lead the PKB mission. It will be 
implemented following the highly successful management model 
of NASA's Discovery Program. 

                            -end-