What will happen if a person lands on Pluto?

faisal khan

It has a solid surface and we actually, thanks to New Horizons, have mapped a large part of it. So it is actually possible to land there, unlike some of the stupid questions asked on here about landing on one of the giant planets. That is not possible, due to their not having a solid surface, insane weather by our standards, and crushing gravity.

The main problems with landing on Pluto, setting aside just getting there, involve decelerating enough to make a soft-landing possible, and the bitter cold. Even at perihelion, and Pluto is not too far past this in its orbit, the “high” temperature there is is about negative 369F (-233C). It is so far away from the Sun that it receives very little light and heat.

Basically, humans cannot visit Pluto and definitely can never land there for a visit unless we develop technology that can protect humans from such temperatures, and propulsion systems that can get there on a reasonable timescale and also be able to decelerate. We can reach Mars on a simple Hohmann transfer orbit in a few months; it took New Horizons nine years to reach Pluto. Some sort of fusion propulsion system will be needed to explore the outer Solar System, and we’re still a very long way from developing such a thing unless we decided to revive Project Orion.

With that said, if these technologies are developed and man-rated, and we used them to land on Pluto, it should be fairly straightforward. We’d probably touch down in Tombaugh Regio, the heart-shaped feature that is relatively smooth. A lot of Pluto is made up of craggy mountains of rock and frozen nitrogen. But once you’ve landed, it shouldn’t be too hard to leave. Gravity on Pluto is only 6.3 percent of Earth.

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