Imagine Christopher Columbus had discovered a remarkable new world to the west of Europe – and never gone back. Imagine Queen Isabella had decided that she had spent enough cash funding his first trip, and chose to invest the rest a little closer to home. It’s unthinkable. And yet there is a danger we will do the same with our own solar system.

We have now completed the survey. The New Horizons probe is heading out beyond Pluto, sending us data on the most distant objects in the solar system, never to return. But we must make sure that we do, somehow, go back to this region.

The danger of that not happening is growing because the focus of our attention is about to shift. At the beginning of December, NASA will ask for applicants to a new astronaut training plan. That is bound to excite the media, and public attention will be diverted the circus surrounding crewed missions to Mars. Meanwhile, all the rich potential of the rest of our neighbourhood will fade into the background.


Why we have to return to Pluto

Pluto has been an astonishing discovery. The data painstakingly beamed back to us from the New Horizons probe has shown us a world far removed from the plain, dull rock that many expected to see. There is geological patterning, ice crusts and glaciers, an atmosphere, volcanoes and a host of other reasons to take another look.

“Beyond Pluto: New Horizons probe aims for another unseen world”

It’s not the only place to revisit. Exploring the moons of Saturn and Jupiter – Europa and Enceladus in particular – might redefine our sense of being alone in the universe. Both the European Space Agency and NASA are hatching plans to visit at least one of these worlds, but launch is a distant prospect, and nothing is yet set in stone.

Other countries have space programmes, of course. India, Japan and China are all performing impressive feats – but only close at hand. NASA is being pushed towards more human-scale goals: asteroid deflection, Mars bases, moon missions. With the US Senate’s recent decision that if Americans can mine something from space, it’s theirs, our focus is likely to become even more pedestrian. Meanwhile, Pluto stares back at us from a few billion kilometres away, our one-night stand that has the potential to be so much more.

A new model of space exploration

What would it take to go back? To go beyond Jupiter requires propulsion technology that only NASA and Russia possess, in the shape of radioisotope thermoelectric generators. No one is expecting Russia to launch exploratory deep space missions, and NASA has no real mandate to head back to the furthermost reaches of our solar system. Which means we need to redefine the model of space exploration.

The European Space Agency, in its international collaboration, has shown the way. The notion that space agencies should follow the national airline model – competing against each other in a jingoistic battle for supremacy – is an anachronism. We can combine forces, share expertise and resources to find a way to expand human horizons without fretting about compromising some misplaced notion of national pride. It’s time to take pride in human beings. The alternative is to know that Pluto and the other residents of the outer solar system will remain a fond but ever more distant memory of an all too brief encounter.

Discover more about Pluto on our New Horizons round-up page.

Image credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/Steve Gribben/Alex Parker