re satellite around pluto mission in article apr aurora alaska edu nsmca aurora alaska edu writes is there a plan to put a satellite around each planet in the solar system to keep watch there would be some point to doing long term monitoring of things like particles and fields not to mention atmospheric phenomena however there is no particular plan to establish any sort of monitoring network to be precise there is no particular plan period this is a large part of the problem in this context it s not surprising that unexciting but useful missions like this get short shrift at budget time the closest approach to any sort of long term planetary monitoring mission is the occasional chance to piggyback something like this on top of a flashier mission like galileo or cassini how about a mission unmanned to pluto to stay in orbit and record things around and near and on pluto it is most unlikely that there is much happening on pluto that would be worth monitoring and it is a prohibitively difficult mission to fly without new propulsion technology something the planetary community has firmly resisted being the guinea pigs for the combined need to arrive at pluto within a reasonable amount of time and then kill nearly all of the cruise velocity to settle into an orbit is beyond what can reasonably be done with current that is s vintage propulsion it could do some scanning of not only pluto but also of the solar system objects near and aaroundpluto as well as seti and looking at the galaxy without having much of the solar system to worry about most of this can be done just about as well from earth the few things that can t be can be done better from a voyager like spacecraft that is not constrained by the need to enter orbit around a planet svr resembles a high speed collision henry spencer u of toronto zoology between svr and sunos dick dunn henry zoo toronto edu utzoo henry
