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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

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who are 15 to 16 years old today are going to be the ones who will then control the spacecraft.

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So is there a plan about how the mission will be carried out in the future,

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because many of the scientists who are now working on the mission won't be present at the time when the spacecraft reaches Pluto?

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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.

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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

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when we arrive at Pluto to get all that data back. That's really what they're waiting for at this point.

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But it is true that over the course of such a long mission, people, you know, will probably leave the job.

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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

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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.

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This is part of an effort we refer to as longevity planning,and there are a number of aspects to it,

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including archiving all the documentation that exists today. We have training sessions to certify our operators of the spacecraft,

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and as new operators come onboard they will be trained and certified to continue operating the spacecraft.

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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.

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We also maintain a simulator on the ground which is used as a training aid also to help new operators when they come onboard.

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And then, finally, we do have a lot of rehearsals planned before the actual encounter with Pluto, which

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will serve not only to assess the status of the spacecraft, but to help train or retrain people to conduct the encounter.

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I can imagine being a scientist that you would want to see it all the way through, no matter what.

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Right. It's kind of difficult to delay gratification for as long as this mission is, but people are willing to do it.

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It's worth the return.

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