Alan Stern Quotes

The solar system should be viewed as our backyard, not as some sequence of destinations that we do one at a time.

Human technology has made it to Mars. We are transmitting gorgeous pictures from it. Yet we have not explored our own planet. Two-thirds of it is covered with oceans that are still mysterious places.

New Horizons isn't just visiting Pluto; it's visiting this entire region. Whatever it finds, this will be a signal moment for planetary exploration - the capstone to our first reconnaissance of the planets of our solar system.

People ask, 'What are the scientific questions you're going to answer?' New Horizons doesn't have any of those; it's purely about raw exploration... We're not 'rewriting the textbook' - we're writing the textbook from scratch.

I think when people see Pluto revealed by New Horizons, its satellite system, its complex surface, its atmosphere, I think they'll have a hard time saying 'That's not a planet' because it obviously will be, and I think most people are already coming to that opinion anyway, but I think that's really going to drive it home viscerally.

Titan is Saturn's largest moon, and, until Cassini had arrived, there was the largest single expanse of unexplored terrain that we had remaining in our solar system.

We are involved in technology development for, you know, missions that we hope to plan that would take us to an asteroid and eventually to Mars.

In the four years since its launch, Kepler has chalked up 122 new and confirmed planets. It's also caught the scent of nearly three thousand additional objects, of which probably 80 percent or more will turn out to be other-worldly orbs.

With the mission to Mars, the whole world wants to get involved. So we actually have 13 different space agencies from around the world working on the global exploration road map.

President Bush's proposal to focus our resources on sending humans to Mars is intriguing, but it is not the most compelling reason that Americans ought to focus our interest on the Red Planet.

I'm never going to go to Mars, but I've helped inspire, thank goodness, the people who built the rockets and sent our photographic equipment off to Mars.

I want to get to the moon. I want to go to Mars.

A time will come when men will stretch out their eyes. They should see planets like our Earth.

For the new century, back to the moon, back to the future and this time back to stay. And then a journey into tomorrow, a journey to another planet, a manned mission to Mars.

I think we know how to do Mars.

People keep talking about how we have to go to Mars. We may want to go to Mars sometime.

We have one planet in our solar system that's habitable, and that's the Earth, and space travel can transform things back here for the better. First of all, by just having people go to space and look back on this fragile planet we live on. People have come back transformed and have done fantastic things.

You cannot study other planets without referring to Earth and without applying the techniques and the insights of Earth science. And you cannot really do a good job understanding the Earth without the insights from planetary exploration.

A lot of the science fiction that I grew up reading was written when we still thought that Venus might be an oceanic planet.

We're being very careful that we don't send a spacecraft to Mars with the intention of detecting Martian life - and find out that we detected the Earth life that we took with us.

Voyager's passage through Saturn's inner system exposed diverse moons with dynamic forces at work. Titan, Saturn's largest moon, whose surface remained invisible through its thick, ubiquitous haze, nonetheless teased observers with hints of a possible ocean of liquid hydrocarbons.

Whether there's even an ocean on Pluto deep inside is a question I hope New Horizons can address in indirect ways.

Eventually we're going to go to Mars, and I firmly believe the first person that sets foot on Mars will get there on a Boeing rocket.

You could not have predicted the amazing discoveries at Pluto, even though we have been to a couple of objects in the solar system that were at least a little analogous to Pluto.

I expect New Horizons will see more that Hubble cannot see.