Well anything is possible, in the early 1980s, NASA during the Reagan administration actually gave some thought to cutting links to Voyager II BEFORE it got to Uranus (1986) and Neptune (1989). But I doubt it would come to that for New Horizons. IIRC Juno is supposed to reach Jupiter this year. There are other missions planned for Jupiter as well. And Mars gets its usual amount of attention.
If any of you still have your 1st gen. Sony Playstations, you might want to dust them off and play some games on them. It used the same processor as New Horizons does.
About Pluto's red rains. Lots more at the link. And in case you're wondering Yes, the author/scientist is a hottie.
Lots more at the artist's amazing website: www.stevethomasart.com I think I'm redoing all the artwork in my "man cave" (!)
Nerdworld. Pluto: A Land of Nightmares and Brave Souls Tombaugh Regio: Mountains of Explorers and Hills of Spacecraft West of the Heart: Depressions and Craters East of the Heart: Freckled Craters and Bulging Ridges The Far Side of Pluto: Odd Little Lines Below the Heart: A Last-Ditch Reach to Horror Charon: A World of Exploration Western Charon: Star Wars, Alien, and Doctor Who Central Charon: Firefly, Star Trek, and 2001
New Horizons next target selected. It's a comet-like object, 45 billion klicks from Pluto and leaves them with a lot of fuel to potentially examine other objects. http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-34103829
Pluto may have a liquid ocean 62 miles deep under its surface. Or to put it another way, that's how high SpaceShipOne had to fly to win the X-Prize.
Eventually. Some of the data is released to the public immediately and some of it is released to specific academic groups, before becoming public after a set period of time. All of it, save probably the technical details of the nuclear engine, will be available on the web for access by anyone in a few years.
And where's liquid water there may be... you know. Just imagine. A comet, which there are plenty of out there, smashes into Pluto and brings some organic stuff with it. Now that would be a place to find life, wouldn't it. Forget Mars, forget the Jovian Moons, forget Titan, go look on fucking Pluto
Finding any life, or the evidence of extinct life on any of the other planets in our solar system would change so much about what we know our believe we know. It could mean that the unverse is teeming with life. It could be entirely possible that almost any star can have a system with some type of life in it