In a comprehensive, 417-page report designed to serve as a roadmap for the next decade of solar system exploration, a committee of planetary scientists is urging NASA to launch a reoriented Pluto–Kuiper Belt (PKB) mission and is advocating a return to costly, once-a-decade flagship missions in the $650 million to $1 billion range. The National Research Council (NRC) report, entitled New Frontiers in the Solar System: An Integrated Exploration Strategy, was compiled at NASA’s request and is modeled after the decadal reports in astronomy and astrophysics.
After reviewing 27 missions proposed by six panels, a 15-member steering committee, chaired by astronomer Michael Belton, president of Belton Space Exploration Initiatives in Tucson, Arizona, recommended that NASA conduct 12 missions. Dimitri Papanastassiou, a committee member and cosmochemist with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said NASA asked the committee to “identify and prioritize potential missions, separately for the Solar System...
