I’m sure for a lot people, they don’t have that “I remember where I was when we saw the first images of Pluto.” But I do. I was at work, watching a live NASA feed as they released the first high resolution images of that most distant planet, er, dwarf planet, Pluto.
Chasing New Horizons: Inside the Epic First Mission to Pluto
Authors: Alan Stern and David Grinspoon
Pages: 320
Format: Paperback
Published: May 1, 2018
Publisher: Picador
View on Goodreads
Date Completed: September 24, 2024
My rating: 
Thoughts
I probably wasn’t aware of the New Horizons mission when it launched in 2006, but I was there at the end when it got to Pluto. Reading this book really put me there for the whole mission.
This book really does a good job of going back to before the discovery of Pluto, then called Planet X, and taking the reader through the years. I’ve been to the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, AZ. So it was especially fun to read about Percival Lowell and the observatory and Clyde Tombaugh’s discovery of Pluto in 1930.
It’s sad to me that there was so much going against a mission to Pluto. I get it that there were other missions people wanted to do and only so much money to go around. But it seems like some people couldn’t have cared less (and one who made it his mission to de-planet-ize poor Pluto).
With so many hurdles to jump, it’s amazing that Alan Stern and everyone else made this all happen without much of a hitch. It’ll probably be forever before we end up sending anything else that far again, so I’m glad we got to do this when we did.
I love these kinds of books. Memoirs of human persistence and achievement. Makes a person feel pretty good about humanity for a few minutes.
This is a 5 star book and a must read for any space enthusiast.
