Alan Stern Quotes

What planet are you on?

Back before the Kuiper Belt was discovered, Pluto did look like a misfit that didn't belong with either the terrestrials or the giant planets.

The Kuiper Belt is the largest mapped structure in our planetary system, three times as big as all the territory from the sun out to Neptune's orbit.

Pluto is the new Mars.

I think that one of the things that will come out of the New Horizons mission is that the public will take a look, and they won't know what else to call Pluto but a planet - and a pretty exciting one.

I actually started my career in planetary science with a master's thesis on Pluto.

The scientific theory I like best is that the rings of Saturn are composed entirely of lost airline luggage.

The universe is hilarious! Like, Venus is 900 degrees. I could tell you it melts lead. But that's not as fun as saying, 'You can cook a pizza on the windowsill in nine seconds.' And next time my fans eat pizza, they're thinking of Venus!

The public has an incredible capacity for appreciating the wonder of our planet, our solar system, our universe.

I grew up in this business... A lot of my life has been centered around this question about how NASA is helping us to understand our own home planet... and to understand our place in the universe.

It feels great to discover a planet, just like any discovery in science, except that it has more of the feel of exploration - you can go back and look at it. However, I can never visit.

The boundary between space and the earth is purely arbitrary. And I'll probably always be interested in this planet - it's my favorite.

This is what the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) represents. Experimental, explorational science. Learning about Mars as a new world. Discovering new things that will tell us about the history of our solar system, help reveal the secrets of life, and continue blazing the trail that may someday be traveled by the rest of us.

Pluto has a very interesting history, and there is a lot of work that we need to do to understand this very complicated place.

The Pluto system is much more complex than I had expected.

I'm the one who originally coined the term 'dwarf planet,' back in the nineteen-nineties.

Just speaking for myself, I think the return of people to the Moon has a lot to offer for understanding the formation and evolution of terrestrial worlds; so would the exploration of near-Earth asteroids by people.

It shouldn't be so difficult to determine what a planet is. When you're watching a science fiction show like 'Star Trek' and they show up at some object in space and turn on the viewfinder, the audience and the people in the show know immediately whether it's a planet or a star or a comet or an asteroid.

As a planetary system, Saturn holds the greatest promise for answering questions that have a far broader scientific reach than Saturn itself.

Most of the solar system resides beyond the orbits of the asteroids. There is more to learn there about general planetary processes than on Mars.

Mars does not belong to 'America,' nor to Earth, nor to human beings.

There are other planets besides the Earth and Mars. I'd like to remind you that studying Venus is vital to understanding life elsewhere.

The questions that we scientist have about Saturn's rings are the questions that an ordinary person might be moved to ask when first seeing them, you know. What caused them? How did they get there? How long have they been around? How long are they going to last?

I'm really into space. When I was four years old, I used to pray to the stars and look at the moon.

We're going to find Marses and maybe Earths out in the solar system's attic of the Oort Cloud and the Kuiper Belt.