His last question is: If New Horizons is going to reach Pluto in 2015, I want to know what kind of manpower will be used because children
who are 15 to 16 years old today are going to be the ones who will then control the spacecraft.
So is there a plan about how the mission will be carried out in the future,
because many of the scientists who are now working on the mission won't be present at the time when the spacecraft reaches Pluto?
Well, I think that's a good question and requires some looking ahead and some thought to the fact that it is such a long mission.
First of all, let me assure you that every scientist that I know of working on the job today fully intends to be working on the job
when we arrive at Pluto to get all that data back. That's really what they're waiting for at this point.
But it is true that over the course of such a long mission, people, you know, will probably leave the job.
We have very many experienced people working right now, operating spacecraft, and a lot of engineers that have supported it, and it's a very
conscious effort to try to capture all that knowledge and manage it over the period of the, the life of the mission so that we don't lose that knowledge.
This is part of an effort we refer to as longevity planning,and there are a number of aspects to it,
including archiving all the documentation that exists today. We have training sessions to certify our operators of the spacecraft,
and as new operators come onboard they will be trained and certified to continue operating the spacecraft.
A lot of those training sessions today are being recorded on DVD and they'll be archived so that people can refer to those later on.
We also maintain a simulator on the ground which is used as a training aid also to help new operators when they come onboard.
And then, finally, we do have a lot of rehearsals planned before the actual encounter with Pluto, which
will serve not only to assess the status of the spacecraft, but to help train or retrain people to conduct the encounter.
I can imagine being a scientist that you would want to see it all the way through, no matter what.
Right. It's kind of difficult to delay gratification for as long as this mission is, but people are willing to do it.
It's worth the return.