The Spacecraft Is Doing Well

Every week, the New Horizons spacecraft sends back a little signal that it’s still alive and kicking, even as it snoozes its way toward its next target. It’s a “green light” signal and every time it shows up, the NH team, as well as its fans around the world, breathe easy. They know that all’s well out in the Kuiper Belt. Later this year, New Horizons will ‘wake up’ and start operations for the next target. It’s on the way out to Ultima Thule, the next (and probably final) flyby on its tour of the Belt. That’ll happen on the last day of December into January 1, 2019. We’re all hoping the data return will be spectacular.

Reading Up on the Mission

The story of New Horizons has played out in the public eye ever since the first of the “best images” of Pluto made it back from the spacecraft in 2015. However, the human side of the New Horizons mission is a lesser-known story.  That’s all about to change with the release on May 1st of the book Chasing New Horizons: Inside the Epic First Mission to Pluto, written by the mission’s principal investigator Alan Stern and planetary scientist/science writer David Grinspoon.

I have read the book twice now thanks to the publisher who sent me a lovely review copy. It’s a thought-provoking and well-written story of the behind-the-scenes action that brought the spacecraft to life. Now, I should mention (by way of transparency) that Alan and David and I all worked in the same lab at the University of Colorado, during overlapping residencies in the late 1980s and 1990s. I know several other team members, including Fran Bagenal, who was one of my professors at CU and a friend. So, reading the story and knowing the folks who were involved lent a much more personal air to their experiences.

Even though I knew that Alan was interested in icy, frozen worlds, I really didn’t know much about how he and his team worked. They embarked on a quarter century of effort. That got their mission taken seriously by NASA, funded, flown, and out to its targets. Reading Chasing New Horizons really opened my eyes to the skull sweat, imagination, and determination it takes to get something like New Horizons “on the road”. Despite being thrown many an obstacle, both technological and political, Stern and the team got it done, and the book is a wonderful testament to their work.

Loss of Signal

Chasing New Horizons presents a lot of insight into what it’s like to be on a spacecraft mission. Those revelations delighted me to no end. For one thing, I always thought it would be cool to work on a mission like this. That was one of my goals when I went back to grad school. I did end up working on a mission team, but for Hubble Space Telescope. That, too, had its challenges, as most people remember. Despite its many problems, HST soldiers on, as do its team members around the world.

For New Horizons team members, there were also heart-stopping moments like those we faced with spherical aberration. Just six days before the Pluto flyby, New Horizons ceased communications. It happened right after an upload of software commands and sent everyone into high gear to solve the problem. In the book, mission operations manager Alice Bowman described the moment when NH went dark.

“You know that feeling in the pit of your stomach when something is occurring, and you can’t believe it’s happening? We’d come nine and a half years on this journey, and I couldn’t believe this—we’d never lost communications. You allow yourself that five, ten seconds of feeling that fear and disbelief, but then everything we trained for started to kick in.”

In the post-launch chapters in Chasing New Horizons, Alan and David describe the constant training and practice runs the team engaged in to face situations just like this one. Within minutes of signal loss, the people began to diagnose the problem and figure out a solution. And, fix it they did. As we all know, the mission went on as planned, delivering magnificent results.

The Personal Becomes the Public

Chasing New Horizons is filled with personal,  technological, and scientific insights on a very public mission. The writers interviewed team members and shared their comments to flesh out the not-so-public portion of the mission. There are some incredible scenes that just sent a chill through me as I realized that I knew the people to which these things were happening.

Even if you don’t know Alan Stern and Alice Bowman and Glen Fountain and Fran Bagenal and others who guided the spacecraft from birth to Pluto and beyond, you’ll get a thrill reading their stories. The book belongs on your bookshelf. Read it often. Appreciate what it is our fellow citizens have done to bring Pluto and the Kuiper Belt into our view.