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Old 06-07-2015, 04:58 PM
deanm (Dean)
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Join Date: Sep 2010
Location: Adelaide
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Mike - having thrusters is no issue: it's the enormous quantity of propellant that would be needed to decelerate into Pluto orbit.

Orbit-matching approaches to targets, as successfully performed by Dawn, Hayabusa, Rosetta etc. work, but take a long time.

The 10 years to Pluto direct (as was done by New Horizons) would be much inflated by a similar orbit-matching scenario.

Dean
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