WEBVTT

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Our next question comes from Junichi from Japan.

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Is New Horizons spacecraft going to drop a lander on the surface of Pluto and/or Charon to explore them?

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Well, the answer is no. A lander would take extra mass in the spacecraft launch mass. It takes a lot of energy to get a spacecraft to Pluto.

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Any additional lander or anything else we put on the spacecraft would make it that much harder to get there when we want to get there.

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And, in fact, we can accomplish all the science we need to accomplish without a lander, with

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just the instrument complement that we have onboard right now.

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And the other thing is that a lander adds an extra degree of complexity to the mission, and you try to

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keep things as simple as possible in order to achieve your scientific goals.

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