I actually started my career in planetary science with a master's thesis on Pluto. — Alan Stern Copy Share Image
To say that what a planet is doesn't matter would be to imply that a planetary scientist couldn't explain to someone what… — Alan Stern Copy Share Image
Either data supports the observations or they don't. Voting doesn't work in science. — Alan Stern Copy Share Image
I can't imagine how many kids around the world will look at pictures of Pluto and think, 'I want to grow up… — Alan Stern Copy Share Image
I tell public audiences, don't go to a podiatrist for brain surgery; don't go to an astronomer for planetary science. — Alan Stern Copy Share Image
If you go to planetary science meetings and hear technical talks on Pluto, you will hear experts calling it a planet every… — Alan Stern Copy Share Image
I just think it's patently absurd for scientists to categorize objects on the basis of the numbers of objects that they can… — Alan Stern Copy Share Image
That so many binary or quasi-binary KBOs exist came as a real surprise to the research community. — Alan Stern Copy Share Image
Science doesn't work by voting. Did people vote on the theory of relativity? No! It's either right or it's wrong. Do we… — Alan Stern Copy Share Image
One of the implications of the discovery of the Kuiper Belt and its many small planets is that many scientists now think… — Alan Stern Copy Share Image
One thing scientists do is to find order among a large number of facts, and one way to do that across fields… — Alan Stern Copy Share Image
A river is a river, independent of whether there are other rivers nearby. In science, we call things what they are based… — Alan Stern Copy Share Image
People ask, 'What are the scientific questions you're going to answer?' New Horizons doesn't have any of those; it's purely about raw… — Alan Stern Copy Share Image
We're just learning that a lot of planets are small planets, and we didn't know that before, fact is, in planetary science,… — Alan Stern Copy Share Image
As a scientist in charge of space sensors and entire space missions before I was at NASA, I myself was involved in… — Alan Stern Copy Share Image
Typically in science, individual scientists make up their minds about scientific fact or theory one at a time. We don't take votes.… — Alan Stern Copy Share Image
It shouldn't be so difficult to determine what a planet is. When you're watching a science fiction show like 'Star Trek' and… — Alan Stern Copy Share Image
In science, we take large numbers of disparate facts and reduce them to see patterns. We use the patterns to reduce the… — Alan Stern Copy Share Image
As a researcher, I look forward to being able to do space science in a space environment. — Alan Stern Copy Share Image
As a planetary scientist, I don't know what else to call Pluto: It's big and round and thousands of miles wide. — Alan Stern Copy Share Image
The big lesson of planetary science is when you do a first reconnaissance of a new kind of object, you should expect… — Alan Stern Copy Share Image
We made more than just scientific discoveries... we rediscovered how much people love exploration. — Alan Stern Copy Share Image
Competition-driven innovation and price pressure that commercial practices foster can only make human spaceflight ever more common and U.S. leadership in this domain ever… — Alan Stern Copy Share
Of course Pluto is a planet: It's massive enough to have its shape controlled by gravity rather than material strength, which is the hallmark… — Alan Stern Copy Share
It used to be said that Pluto is a misfit. But now we know Earth is the misfit. This is the most populous class… — Alan Stern Copy Share
The Kuiper belt region, which I call the third zone because it lies beyond the rocky terrestrial planets and beyond the giant planets, is… — Alan Stern Copy Share
I think if you were between maybe 6 and 16, there was nothing like Apollo, and I wonder if there can be something like… — Alan Stern Copy Share
If you put Earth out beyond Neptune, you wouldn't be able to call it a planet because it couldn't clear its zone. — Alan Stern Copy Share
When we first sent missions to Jupiter, no one expected to find moons that would have active volcanoes. And I could go down a… — Alan Stern Copy Share
Pluto is still active four and a half billion years into its history. It was expected that small planets like Pluto would cool off… — Alan Stern Copy Share
The Kuiper Belt is the largest mapped structure in our planetary system, three times as big as all the territory from the sun out… — Alan Stern Copy Share
If two billion people wanted to watch a robot fly by Pluto, imagine what it will be like when the first humans step on… — Alan Stern Copy Share
To keep everyone invested in your vision, you have to back up a little bit and really analyze who the different stakeholders are and… — Alan Stern Copy Share
We're going to find Marses and maybe Earths out in the solar system's attic of the Oort Cloud and the Kuiper Belt. — Alan Stern Copy Share
One of the implications of the discovery of the Kuiper Belt and its many small planets is that many scientists now think of the… — Alan Stern Copy Share
CASIS has to succeed because for it not to succeed would be a huge setback for the International Space Station program. — Alan Stern Copy Share
