Alan Stern

As a researcher, I look forward to being able to do space science in a space environment. ”

How can an adjective in front of a noun not describe the noun? There are dwarf stars, but they're still considered stars. ”

I just think it's patently absurd for scientists to categorize objects on the basis of the numbers of objects that they can remember. ”

Pluto is still active four and a half billion years into its history. It was expected that small planets like Pluto would cool off long ago and not still be showing geological activity. Pluto is, in fact, showing numerous examples of geological activity on a massive scale across the planet. ”

Every mission has life-or-death moments. ”

The big lesson of planetary science is when you do a first reconnaissance of a new kind of object, you should expect the unexpected. ”

To keep everyone invested in your vision, you have to back up a little bit and really analyze who the different stakeholders are and what they individually respond to. ”

If the Pluto mission was a cat, then it would've been dead long ago because they only get nine lives, and we've had significantly more than nine stoppages and odd twists and turns. ”

We were very surprised to find out that Pluto is still geologically alive. It has upended our ideas of how planetary geophysics works. ”

A river is a river, independent of whether there are other rivers nearby. In science, we call things what they are based on their attributes, not what they're next to. ”