Gerard Kuiper's 100th Birthday

http://www.swri.org/9what/releases/2005/Kuiper.htm

A century after Gerard Kuiper's birth, U.S. prepares to launch first
probe to the Kuiper Belt

Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) News

Boulder, Colo. -- December 7, 2005 -- One hundred years ago today,
Dutch-American astronomer Gerard P. Kuiper was born in Harenscarpel,
The
Netherlands. Just over one month from now, NASA plans to launch its
first mission, New Horizons, to study explore the fascinating region of
the solar system that Kuiper foresaw.

Kuiper became one of the greatest 20th century astronomers and is
widely
considered the father of planetary science. Among his most notable
accomplishments was a widely publicized 1950 prediction that a giant
debris belt from the formation of the solar system resides beyond the
orbit of Neptune. That prediction was borne out in the 1990s when
astronomers discovered the first bodies orbiting with Pluto beyond
Neptune. More than 1,000 "Kuiper Belt" objects are now known;
astronomers expect over 100,000 such objects to be eventually
discovered. Kuiper became a U.S. citizen in 1937.

"It's fitting that New Horizons will take flight near the centennial of
Dr. Kuiper's birth," says Dr. Alan Stern, principal investigator of the
New Horizons mission and executive director of the Space Science and
Engineering Division at Southwest Research Institute. "The Kuiper Belt
is the largest structure in our planetary system and the home of the
Pluto system, as well as myriad other miniature worlds that orbit in a
deep freeze far beyond Neptune, the most distant of the giant planets.
Its discovery has revolutionized our understanding of the architecture
of our home solar system and forced us to confront the jarring, but
exciting new fact that miniature planets like Pluto are more numerous
than the conventional ones like Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars and the
giant planets."

Among Kuiper's students were such notable 20th century planetary
scientists as Carl Sagan, William Hartmann, Toby Owen, Tom Gehrels and
New Horizons Science Team Co-Investigator Dr. Dale Cruikshank of the
NASA Ames Research Center in California.

During his career, Kuiper studied all the known planets, asteroids, and
the stars and nebulae of the Milky Way. His many accomplishments
included pioneering studies of Cepheid variables and eclipsing binary
stars, the discovery of Titan's atmosphere, studies of the origin of
the
Moon and the development of infrared detectors. Kuiper died December
23,
1973, at age 68.

"Kuiper studied the planets at a time, 50 years ago, when they were
scarcely of interest to other astronomers," says Dr. Bill McKinnon, New
Horizons co-investigator and professor of Planetary Sciences at
Washington University in St. Louis, Mo. "But with new telescopes and
instrumentation, he showed that there were great things to discover,
which is as true today as then -- witness the recent discovery of two
new moons of Pluto. His planetary expertise later proved invaluable to
NASA as well, especially during the early days of the race to our
moon."

New Horizons Co-Investigator Dr. Richard Binzel of the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology adds, "Kuiper was one of the first scientists
to
focus almost exclusively on exploring the properties of planets. His
work laid the foundation for the spacecraft missions of the late 20th
and early 21st centuries."

"As we recall the life and the scientific achievements of Dr. Kuiper on
this day, 100 years after his birth," concludes Stern, "we also look
forward to the exciting day, a decade hence, when New Horizons will
reach Pluto and initiate the historic exploration of this
scientifically
rich, almost unimaginably distant region of our solar system called the
Kuiper Belt, some three billion miles away."

The exploration of the Kuiper Belt in general, and the Pluto system in
particular, was ranked as the highest priority new start for a NASA
planetary mission in this decade by the National Research Council. NASA
is funding the New Horizons mission, the first mission in NASA's New
Frontiers program. Pending final approval, the spacecraft will launch
from Kennedy Space Center in January 2006. Stern leads the New Horizons
science and mission teams. The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics
Laboratory manages the mission and will operate the spacecraft for the
NASA Science Mission Directorate.

Editors: More information on the life and accomplishments of Dr. Gerard
Kuiper is available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerard_P._Kuiper;
information on the Kuiper Belt is at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuiper_belt; information on the New
Horizons mission is at http://pluto.jhuapl.edu.

For more information, contact Maria Martinez )
Communications Department, (210) 522-3305,
Southwest Research Institute, PO Drawer 28510, San Antonio, TX
78228-0510.