[X] My Assistant

[cIclops]

This seems worthy of a new topic now that we have a higher level in the board

Alan has told us that such a mission is possible and could be launched in 2008-2009. There has already been some press coverage of the idea in this Space.com article

Some initial thoughts on what could be discussed here:

What changes should be made to the NH science objectives?

The new mission trajectory, a Uranus encounter?

What changes should be made to the original NH design?

How to sell the mission to NASA.

[dvandorn]

I've always felt that if you're going to fly two of a given probe, you ought to fly them at roughly the same time. As has been said here before, when NH gets to Pluto it will be using instruments and data systems that are 15 or more years out of date. Why fly a duplicate of such a spacecraft in a few years, when for not much more money we could design and build a more capable spacecraft? At least, a spacecraft that has the benefit of those extra years of improvement and enhancement of the sensing packages?

If you're going to fly NH2, I'd select another one or two KBOs (or other objects) it could reach, and launch it ASAP. That would cost the least amount of additional money and put the existing hardware to the best use. But if you're planning on missions to fly in 5, 10 or more years, I'd simply leave it to a newly-designed probe that will have greater capabilities and give more "bang for the buck."

-the other Doug