Pluto is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt, a ring of bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune. It is the ninth-largest and tenth-most-massive known object to directly orbit the Sun. It is the largest known trans-Neptunian object by volume, by a small margin, but is less massive than Eris. Like other Kuiper belt objects, Pluto is made primarily of ice and rock and is much smaller than the inner planets. Pluto has roughly one-sixth the mass of the Moon, and one-third its volume.
Carolyn C. Porco is an American planetary scientist who explores the outer Solar System, beginning with her imaging work on the Voyager missions to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune in the 1980s. She led the imaging science team on the Cassini mission in orbit around Saturn. She is an expert on planetary rings and the Saturnian moon, Enceladus.
Jitendra Jatashankar Rawal is an Indian astrophysicist and scientific educator, recognized for his work in the popularisation of science.
Sol Alan Stern is an American engineer, planetary scientist and space tourist. He is the principal investigator of the New Horizons mission to Pluto and the Chief Scientist at Moon Express.
Rosaly M. C. Lopes is a planetary geologist, volcanologist, an author of numerous scientific papers and several books, as well as a proponent of education. Her major research interests are in planetary and terrestrial surface processes with an emphasis on volcanology.
The Space Science Institute (SSI) in Boulder, Colorado, is a nonprofit, public-benefit corporation formed in 1992. Its purpose is to create and maintain an environment where scientific research and education programs can flourish in an integrated fashion. SSI is among the four non-profit institutes in the US cited in a 2007 report by Nature, including Southwest Research Institute, Planetary Science Institute, and Eureka Scientific, which manage federal grants for non-tenure-track astronomers.
A planetary flyby is the act of sending a space probe past a planet or a dwarf planet close enough to record scientific data. This is a subset of the overall concept of a flyby in spaceflight.
David H. Grinspoon is an American astrobiologist. He is the Senior Scientist for Astrobiology Strategy at NASA and was the former inaugural Baruch S. Blumberg NASA/Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology for 2012–2013.
Discovery and exploration of the Solar System is observation, visitation, and increase in knowledge and understanding of Earth's "cosmic neighborhood". This includes the Sun, Earth and the Moon, the major planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, their satellites, as well as smaller bodies including comets, asteroids, and dust.
Stamatios (Tom) Mike Krimizis is a Greek-American scientist in space exploration. He has contributed to many of the United States' unmanned space exploration programs of the Solar System and beyond. He has contributed to exploration missions to almost every planet of the Solar System. In 1999, the International Astronomical Union named the asteroid 8323 Krimigis in his honor.
The exploration of Pluto began with the arrival of the New Horizons probe in July 2015, though proposals for such a mission had been studied for many decades. There are no plans as yet for a follow-up mission, though follow-up concepts have been studied.
David Morrison is an American astronomer, a senior scientist at the Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute, at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. Morrison is the former director of the Carl Sagan Center for Study of Life in the Universe at the SETI Institute and of the NASA Lunar Science Institute. He is the past Director of Space at NASA Ames. Morrison is credited as a founder of the multi-disciplinary field of astrobiology. Morrison is best known for his work in risk assessment of near Earth objects such as asteroids and comets. Asteroid 2410 Morrison was named in his honor. Morrison is also known for his "Ask an Astrobiologist" series on NASA's website where he provides answers to questions submitted by the public. He has published 12 books and over 150 papers primarily on planetary science, astrobiology and near Earth objects.
Mark Robert Showalter is a senior research scientist at the SETI Institute. He is the discoverer of six moons and three planetary rings. He is the Principal Investigator of NASA's Planetary Data System Rings Node, a co-investigator on the Cassini–Huygens mission to Saturn, and works closely with the New Horizons mission to Pluto.
Clark R. Chapman is a senior scientist and astronomer at the Southwest Research Institute's Boulder, Colorado, Department of Space Studies. His research generally focuses on astronomy including meteorology and comets. He earned an undergraduate degree in astronomy from Harvard, Master's Degree in Meteorology from M.I.T., and PhD in Planetary Science from M.I.T. (1972).
Bonnie J. Buratti is an American planetary scientist in the Division of Earth and Space Sciences at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, where she leads the Comets, Asteroids, and Satellites Group. Her research involves the composition and physical properties of planetary surfaces, and volatile transport in the outer solar system.
Cathy Olkin is a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute, focusing on the outer Solar System. She is deputy principal investigator for NASA's Lucy mission examining the Trojan asteroids around Jupiter, which launched in 2021 and will fly past its targets between 2025 and 2033.
Linda Spilker is an American planetary scientist who served as the project scientist for the Cassini mission exploring the planet Saturn. Her research interests include the evolution and dynamics of Saturn's rings. She is presently the Project Scientist for the Voyager missions.
Damon Paul Simonelli was a planetary scientist who worked for Cornell University and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in the U.S. He was a pioneer in the development of radiative transfer models to analyze astronomical objects.
Amy Simon is an American planetary scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, involved in several missions of the Solar System Exploration Program.
Kelsi N. Singer (born 1984) is an American planetary scientist who is a senior research scientist at the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, CO. She is a co-investigator and deputy project scientist of NASA's New Horizons mission studying the geomorphology and geophysics of the Pluto system and of Arrokoth (2014 MU69).
