After four years of ballooning costs and launch weight, NASA brings work on the proposed Pluto-Kuiper Express mission to a stop, citing cost overruns and angering planetary scientists. The scientific community protests that, if a mission is not launched to reach Pluto by the year 2020, the tiny planet’s atmosphere will undergo a kind of reverse sublimation process, transitioning from a gas to a solid that rains down to Pluto’s surface. But with mission plans calling for a half-billion-dollar mission (originally budgeted for only $350 million), NASA pulls the plug, announcing that it will solicit new mission designs and plans from scientists around the world, even as advocates for the Pluto-Kuiper Express mission rally around the cancelled proposal.
theLogBook.com
https://www.theLogBook.com
Earl Green is the creator, curator, and head writer of theLogBook.com.
Also of interest...
Hayabusa at Itokawa
September 12, 2005
Clementine goes off course
May 7, 1994
The Volcanoes of Io
March 9, 1979