Chasing New Horizons - Inside the Epic First Mission to Pluto

Alan Stern, David Grinspoon

Picador

2018

320 páginas

10h 40m

ISBN-10: 1250098963

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.

Resenhas (1)

4 (Muito bom)

Behind the scenes details from the first mission to Pluto

I will start this review with a disclaimer. This book is not about Pluto. The reader is not going to find detailed information about the planet. This book is all about the New Horizons mission to Pluto. From its genesis to completion. "Chasing New Horizons" is a first-hand report of the mission told from the perspective of its, leader Alan Stern.

First, the book tells us about Stern's dream to explore Pluto and how long did it take for it to be fullfilled. I would summarize this book in one word: perseverance. It was a long journey with several obstacles: from NASA bureaucracy, which sometimes seemed to be a kafkaesque experience (remember 'The Castle'? For one moment I thought that Pluto was the castle) to all the politics involved. Also, many times during the read we thought the mission was doomed.

In addition to that the book describes all the challenges of designing a space mission. I was particularly impressed with the amount of work and time required. For example, the Pluto fly-by, which took a dozen days, needed three years to be carefully designed and tested. In the end it was a great win and New Horizons gave us spectacular images of Pluto and its satellites. Great story with a happy ending.

P.S.: The book ends with a small appendix describing the major scientific discoveries by New Horizons.