EXPERTS TO PLOT COURSE TO STARS; SCIENTISTS TO GATHER FOR CONFAB ON SPACE.

Byline: David R. Baker Daily News Staff Writer

Some of the best minds in space exploration will meet today in Pasadena to figure out how to get to Pluto. And Mars. And a few comets and asteroids in between.

The 44th annual conference of the American Astronautical Society will give scientists from across the country a preview of the next few decades of exploration - and it is expected to be an era of robot probes scouring the solar system.

This future has a place for human explorers, too.

Many of the probes to be discussed through Friday at the Pasadena Hilton will lay the groundwork for future astronauts to one day walk on Mars.

``In advance of sending humans there, you have to know a few things about Mars first,'' said Carl Kukkonen, a scientist at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Jet Propulsion Laboratory who will address the conference Thursday.

Kukkonen's audience will represent a unique cross section of America's space exploration community. University professors, government researchers and members of the growing private-sector space industry will attend. The conference is not open to the public.

Much of the technology they will discuss would have seemed pure fantasy not long ago. Future space probes may fly on streams of ions, communicate via inflatable antennas and, in general, cost about as much per mission as Hollywood spends on two big-screen space operas.

And because they are so cheap, these small spacecraft will be sent everywhere. One planned mission, which will be discussed Thursday, would skim closer to the surface of the sun than any other man-made object. Another would visit Pluto, the farthest planet in our solar system. Still another would park itself in orbit around one of Jupiter's moons.

For all the talk of deep space, however, much of the conference will focus on the Red Planet. Inspired by recent discoveries suggesting the possibility of primitive life on ancient Mars, JPL scientists have already plotted a series of robot missions designed to map the planet, burrow into the surface, collect Martian rocks and bring them back to Earth.

``Everybody concluded that the only reasonable way to answer the question, `Did life start on Mars?' was to bring a sample back,'' said Norman Haynes, JPL's director of Mars exploration.

Plans to put humans on Mars are developed much less. But they already have caught the imaginations of some conference delegates.

``Personally, I'd like to see us set our sights on Mars,'' said keynote speaker Bernard Harris Jr., a former space shuttle astronaut who is now vice president of Spacehab Inc., a Vienna, Va.-based space technology firm.

``There's a fascination among human beings with the Martian terrain.''