I grew up mostly in Cleveland, punctuated by sabbatical years in Uganda, the Netherlands, and Ireland. I majored in physics at Yale, then did a Ph.D. in planetary science at the University of Arizona. After graduating, I spent a year doing lab studies in Grenoble, France, and then did a Hubble Fellowship at Lowell Observatory, where I have remained ever since.
My research is on how outer solar system surfaces look, and what their brightnesses and colors can tell us about their compositions, textures, and the processed which shape them. Mostly I'm interested in their appearances in the near infrared, where various ices are far more spectacularly colored than they are at visible wavelengths. From sensitive observations of infrared colors, it is possible to extract a lot of information about a distant, icy surface, including its temperature, its texture, and its composition. My role in the New Horizons team is to apply these techniques to the surfaces of Pluto, Charon, and Kuiper Belt objects observed by the spacecraft.
Dr. Grundy answers some questions for us:
The Pluto Portal: What interests
you about the exploration of Pluto?
Dr. Grundy: We know of
3 different kinds of planets: ones made mostly of rock, of gas, and of ice.
We live on one of the rocky planets, and have robotically explored the 3 others
in our solar system (Mercury, Venus, Mars). We have robotically explored all
4 of our solar system's gas planets, too (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune).
But we've never really seen an icy planet up close. Our solar system seems
to have been unlucky with icy planets, with only one, and a small one at that.
But because it's a different kind of planet from all the others that we have
explored so far, visiting it is especially important, and what we see when
we get there will surely surprise us and deepen our knowledge about this 3rd
class of planets, which may be common elsewhere in the universe.
The Pluto Portal: Do you
think Pluto is a planet, if so why or why not?
Dr. Grundy: Pluto
isn't a rocky terrestrial planet. It's not a gassy giant planet. It's a third
class of planet, composed mostly of ice. So far, it's the only example of
its kind that we know of in our solar system, though other solar systems could
have been luckier and ended up with more of them (and we could have more,
too, still awaiting discovery). Pretty much any property we attribute to planets
is missing from one or another of the planets in our solar system: Mercury
and Venus lack moons, Mercury lacks an atmosphere, all the gas giants lack
surfaces (so they don't even have geology - how can a planet not have geology!?).
Pluto is better-endowed with planetary-type attributes than some of the other
planets, having a large moon, an atmosphere, and a geologically complex surface.
The Pluto Portal: What kind
of discoveries do you think are waiting to be made in the Kuiper Belt?
Dr. Grundy: I don't know.
That's why we're going there! A spacecraft flyby of a KBO will certainly reveal
interesting information about its composition, mass, shape, and surface appearance,
but the most exciting discoveries are things we never even anticipated. We
know so little about KBOs at present that we're almost certain to be surprised
by what we discover from our first close look at one.
The Pluto Portal was envisioned by Dr. S. Alan
Stern, Principal Investigator of the NASA New Horizons Pluto-Kuiper Belt Mission
and Director of the Department Of Space Studies, in Boulder, CO. Website made
possibly by funding from the New Horizons Pluto-Kuiper Belt Mission. Website
created by Ted A. Nichols II. Banner and button artwork created by Daniel
Durda of Southwest Research Insitute's
Department of Space Studies in Boulder, CO. Imagery modified by Ted A.
Nichols II, with permission. Site design help provided by Patricia Kurtz of
Starfire Creations.
This site was last modified on February 1, 2003.
Click here to contact the webmaster.
