Sky & Telescope - December 2018 - 40

BOOK REVIEW by Carolyn Collins Petersen

The "Last First" Reveal
CHASING NEW HORIZONS: Inside the Epic First Mission to Pluto
Alan Stern and David Grinspoon
Picador, 2018
320 pages, ISBN 9781250098962
$28.00, hardcover.
THERE'S A MOMENT in every plan-

etary mission when human drama takes
center stage. For the New Horizons
arrival at Pluto, it came when radio
signals resumed after the ﬂyby on July
14, 2015. Missions Operations Manager
Alice Bowman polled the team for the
spacecraft's condition after nine hours
of radio silence. All managers checked
in successfully. In a moment of pride,
she turned to everyone with a big smile
and said, "PI, this is MOM on Pluto
One. We have a healthy spacecraft.
We've recorded data at the Pluto system,
and we're outbound from Pluto."
A crowd of scientists and observers
broke into wild applause and cheering.
It was a stunning moment made more
radiant by the joy and relief on the team
members' faces as they realized they'd
"done it." They'd explored Pluto and the
spacecraft had lived to tell about it.
The ﬂyby wasn't simply the culmination of nine years of waiting while
the spacecraft got to Pluto. It was the

focus on the human story
that led up to the events
of July 2015. It begins with
Stern's dream of going to
Pluto and follows through to
the triumphant Pluto ﬂyby.
Grinspoon's expert storytelling mixes with Stern's
insights to create a compelling tale. It brings the reader
along as the team met and
exceeded the challenges of
getting a mission planned, approved,
launched, and executed. The story provides a visceral understanding of how it
feels to be part of such an enterprise.
Chasing New Horizons unveils the
shifting political landscapes navigated
by the team. There are stories of bizarre
meetings with NASA administrators,
unforeseen roadblocks, and endless
funding challenges. Just to propel themselves through the maze of requirements (from proposal to assembly to
launch) required the team to be nimble
and tough. "We had obstacles thrown at
us all along the way," said Stern. "They
were both technological and political.
Some we expected, others - especially
from within the Agency - felt like we

The New Horizons mission . . . is the "last first" reveal of an
entirely new planet and a new realm of the solar system.
crowning moment of nearly 26 years of
work that started soon after Alan Stern
and his Pluto colleagues earned their
PhDs. They set out on a decades-long
path of setbacks and cancellations, mission restarts, and incredible competition to get their spacecraft ﬂown.
In Chasing New Horizons: Inside the
Epic First Mission to Pluto, authors Alan
Stern and David Grinspoon, who's a
Contributing Editor of this magazine,
40

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were being played with. But, we persisted, and we got to Pluto."
Stern commanded a disciplined
group able to innovate and persevere
through multiple setbacks. The result
was a tight-knit team that devised an
ingenious spacecraft and delivered
incredible achievements. According to
Grinspoon, youth was an asset. "Alan
was pretty young and inexperienced
when the quest for this mission began,"

Grinspoon notes. "He was
certainly more experienced
than most other freshly
minted PhDs, but still had
to learn an awful lot on the
ﬂy. As someone comments
in the book, it's probably a
good thing that they didn't
anticipate all the setbacks
from the beginning. Sometimes it's better not to know
everything that is in store!"
Several of the human-interest
moments caught me by surprise, such as
the description of the day the spacecraft
arrived at the launch site. "As Alan
stepped out onto the tarmac, Chuck
[Tatro, the New Horizons launch-site
manager] put his hand out to shake
Alan's and said, "Dr. Stern, welcome to
the launch site." The words hit Stern
like a ton of bricks. "After all these
years, from 1989 to 2005, we really,
ﬁnally had a Pluto spacecraft at its
launch site. We were really about to ﬂy
across the solar system and explore the
farthest worlds in history. The reality of
the impending launch and decade-long
ﬂight across the solar system hit me
when Chuck said that. It literally sent a
shiver up my spine!"
Chasing New Horizons is a story that
will resonate with all readers. The mission itself is already among the greats
of planetary exploration history. "I
think it will be mentioned along with
the Mariners, Pioneers, and Voyagers
as an essential part of the ﬁrst phase of
humanity's expansion beyond Earth,"
says Grinspoon. "It's the 'last ﬁrst'
reveal of an entirely new planet and a
new realm of the solar system."

¢ CAROLYN COLLINS PETERSEN is a
science writer with several books to her
credit and a producer of science videos.

Sky & Telescope - December 2018

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Sky & Telescope - December 2018