Mission to Pluto by Dylan Alexander
Four.. .three.. .two.. .one.. .blastoff! This is NASA's first human-manned mission to Pluto: In Search of Life (SOL). We are going 29 AU or 4.2 billion km in search of life on an icy, rocky, body in space that scientists don't even consider a planet in the truest sense, only a "dwarf planet." This has been planned for years, since 2007 to be precise, when NASA inexplicably started receiving strange sounds emanating from Pluto These sounds are remarkably similar to what marine biologists have recorded from the Humpback Whale. While this disputes everything we know about Pluto, the possibility of life forms of any kind is the stuff all scientists dream of. Of course, we know that Pluto is unbelievably cold and made up mostly of nitrogen gas. Its orbit is very eccentric and so is closer than Neptune for twenty years at a time. Its surface is icy and rocky and reflects light, which makes it very unlikely, yes virtually impossible to sustain any life forms and certainly not Humpback Whales, and yet the radio transmissions have been verified.
Our mission has been timed to reach Pluto during the time it is closest to Earth. We are heavily manned with the latest in robotics to collect samples from the surface once we arrive in 2018. We fondly call our main robot "Charon" in honor of Pluto's largest moon, Charon. The most dangerous part of the mission will be getting through the massive bombardment of comets found in the Kuiper Belt, where Pluto is located. For this reason, we've recruited top-gun pilot, Maverick, who is as fearless as he is talented. He truly has the maneuvering skills of Jeff Gordon behind the wheel of a race car. A few thousand comets coming at him won't even make him blink!