Called spellbinding (Scientific American) and thrilling...a future
classic of popular science (Publishers Weekly), 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 humankind's most historic achievements
are in the past, the most distant planetary exploration ever attempted
not only succeeded 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 planning for New Horizons' second act, the amazing January 1,
2019 flyby of Ultima Thule, another billion miles beyond Pluto. Told
from the insider's perspective of mission leader Dr. Alan Stern and
others on New Horizons, 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.
