Alan Stern Quotes

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

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

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'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.

If you go to planetary science meetings and hear technical talks on Pluto, you will hear experts calling it a planet every day.

Pluto is showing us a diversity of landforms and complexity of processes that rival anything we've seen in the solar system.

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.

Going to the Kuiper Belt is like an archaeological dig into the history of the solar system.

We should be ready to reach out beyond our planet and beyond our solar system to find out what is really going on out there.

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.

Planets are too dim to be detected with existing equipment, far away, except in these very special circumstances where they're seen by their gravitational effect.

Some things are only capable of being done in space. Examples of that are looking at our Earth from that far away, and understanding the entire processes of storms and weather patterns, and oceans, and coastlines.

There's a lot to do in space. I want to learn more about the greenhouse effect on Venus, about whether there was life on Mars, about the environment in which Earth and the Sun is immersed, the behavior of the Sun.

We'd never have got a chance to go outside and look at the earth if it hadn't been for space exploration and NASA.

We do have, and will continue to have an unquenchable curiosity to understand our Solar System.

I can remember at the age of about six being fascinated by the planets and learning all about Mars and Venus and things.

Saturn itself is a giant planet, and there's much to be gained by investigating its meteorology and studying its magnetic field.

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

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.

We've explored every type of environment in the solar system at least once.

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.