A biography for Alan Sternhasn’t been written yet.
“Pluto has strong atmospheric cycles: it snows on the surface; the snows sublimate and go back into the atmosphere each 248 year orbit.”
“I just think it's patently absurd for scientists to categorize objects on the basis of the numbers of objects that they can remember.”
“CASIS has to succeed because for it not to succeed would be a huge setback for the International Space Station program.”
“That so many binary or quasi-binary KBOs exist came as a real surprise to the research community.”
“Pluto is showing us a diversity of landforms and complexity of processes that rival anything we've seen in the solar system.”
“I can't imagine how many kids around the world will look at pictures of Pluto and think, 'I want to grow up to be a scientist.'”
“If two billion people wanted to watch a robot fly by Pluto, imagine what it will be like when the first humans step on Mars. It'll be the most unifying event anybody could ever put on.”
“It shouldn't be so difficult to determine what a planet is. When you're watching a science fiction show like 'Star Trek' and they show up at some object in space and turn on the viewfinder, the audience and the people in the show know immediately whether it's a planet or a star or a comet or an asteroid.”
“If you go to planetary science meetings and hear technical talks on Pluto, you will hear experts calling it a planet every day.”
“Pluto has a very interesting history, and there is a lot of work that we need to do to understand this very complicated place.”
“Whether there's even an ocean on Pluto deep inside is a question I hope New Horizons can address in indirect ways.”
“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.”
“Pluto and its brethren are the most populous class of planets in our solar system.”
“It's interesting - Pluto's almost a brand unto itself. It's the farthest. It's the most diminutive of the classical planets. It's been maligned by astronomers. It's always the one with all the question marks in the back of the textbook in the table. I think children identify with it because it's smaller, kind of cute.”
“Science doesn't work by voting. Did people vote on the theory of relativity? No! It's either right or it's wrong. Do we vote on whether genetics is a good theory or not? Of course not.”
“It is only by freeing NASA from routine human transport to low-Earth orbit that we can afford to once again see American astronauts exploring distant worlds.”
“The big lesson of planetary science is when you do a first reconnaissance of a new kind of object, you should expect the unexpected.”
“Having a diverse suite of U.S.-manned spaceflight systems to access space is inherently robust.”
“People dig exploration.”
“I expect New Horizons will see more that Hubble cannot see.”