Called spellbinding (Scientific American) and thrilling...a future
classic of popular science (PW), the up close, inside story of the
greatest space exploration project of our time, New Horizons' mission to
Pluto, as shared with David Grinspoon by mission leader Alan Stern and
other key players.
On July 14, 2015, something amazing happened. More than 3 billion miles
from Earth, a small NASA spacecraft called New Horizons screamed past
Pluto at more than 32,000 miles per hour, focusing its instruments on
the long mysterious icy worlds of the Pluto system, and then, just as
quickly, continued on its journey out into the beyond.
Nothing like this has occurred in a generation--a raw exploration of new
worlds unparalleled since NASA's Voyager missions to Uranus and
Neptune--and nothing quite like it is planned to happen ever again. The
photos that New Horizons sent back to Earth graced the front pages of
newspapers on all 7 continents, and NASA's website for the mission
received more than 2 billion hits in the days surrounding the flyby. At
a time when so many think that our most historic achievements are in the
past, the most distant planetary exploration ever attempted not only
succeeded in 2015 but made history and captured the world's imagination.
How did this happen? Chasing New Horizons is the story of the men and
women behind this amazing mission: of their decades-long commitment and
persistence; of the political fights within and outside of NASA; of the
sheer human ingenuity it took to design, build, and fly the mission; and
of the plans for New Horizons' next encounter, 1 billion miles past
Pluto in 2019. Told from the insider's perspective of mission leader Dr.
Alan Stern and others on New Horizons, and including two stunning
16-page full-color inserts of images, Chasing New Horizons is a
riveting account of scientific discovery, and of how much we humans can
achieve when people focused on a dream work together toward their
incredible goal.
