Reply To: What if?
Midcourse corrections were possible and mandatory; we don’t have THAT kind of precision [The reason it’s incredible is the sheer amount of delta V it takes to get out there without any gravitational assists, which we could have done with that rocket and probe if we had to]. There are thrusters with a small supply of fuel for that purpose. Corrections of course are smaller the earlier they are made.
Furthermore, we made corrections just before the flyby to steer through areas safer from debris. And there is the possibility *still* of making a course change to bring New Horizons past another Kuiper Belt Object.
A lot of people are saying “well this will ensure Pluto gets reclassified as a planet again” but a look at another KBO would possibly provide the evidence that Pluto is quite typical for a KBO. So if Pluto were classed as a planet, a lot of other objects (Eris, Quaoar (sp?) and so on) would also have to be, and we’d suddenly be up in the teens for numbers of “planets” with more undoubtedly on the way.
I was staring at those pictures (not the one you just posted, it wasn’t out yet) and having to remind myself we have good, solid pictures of PLUTO. All I saw as a kid for pictures of it was a dot in a starfield with an arrow pointing to it, because it looked like just another star (it’s both tiny and far away). We had a lot of knowledge of Jupiter, Saturn, etc. but Pluto was a big fat ZERO for knowledge. I feel a certain amount of awe.
