We're in the space exploration business, and the outer solar system is a wild, wooly place. We haven't explored it very well. — Alan Stern Copy Share Image
Going to the Kuiper Belt is like an archaeological dig into the history of the solar system. — Alan Stern Copy Share Image
Pluto and its brethren are the most populous class of planets in our solar system. — Alan Stern Copy Share Image
The solar system is completely wide open. Almost anywhere we go, I'm sure we would learn a lot. — Alan Stern Copy Share Image
It used to be said that Pluto is a misfit. But now we know Earth is the misfit. This is the most… — 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
You could not have predicted the amazing discoveries at Pluto, even though we have been to a couple of objects in the… — Alan Stern Copy Share Image
New Horizons isn't just visiting Pluto; it's visiting this entire region. Whatever it finds, this will be a signal moment for planetary… — Alan Stern Copy Share Image
Discovering that our solar system has many more planets than we ever expected, and that most of them are ice dwarfs rather… — Alan Stern Copy Share Image
We really just didn't realize the diversity of planetary types in our solar system. Pluto looked like a misfit because it was… — Alan Stern Copy Share Image
Pluto is showing us a diversity of landforms and complexity of processes that rival anything we've seen in the solar system. — Alan Stern Copy Share Image
This is in a real sense the capstone of the initial missions to explore the planets. Pluto, its moons and this part… — 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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
