New Horizons mission built and managed by APL revealed up close a new class of planets out in the outer solar system and a glimpse into what could be out there. Pluto turned out to be more interesting than ever imagined. Alan Stern and his team did a great job to humanity in persevering with the mission. His interest with suborbital science and commercial spaceflight should perhaps allow him to push for a Pluto orbiter, kuiper belt mission by private enterprise?!It would be a first.
That has been under consideration!
https://astronomy.com/magazine/2019/10/return-to-pluto
Op Ed, the wonderful thoughts about Pluto science are tempered by thoughts of how old anyone reading this will be by the time the mission would conclude.
Question remains would private enterprise be willing to fund such science missions perhaps share the costs with NASA as Space X is currently doing with human spaceflight. I would suspect that private initiatives would want to fund profit making missions and not doing a purely science mission!
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