Alan Stern on the Pluto Revolution, the Psychology of Persistence, and "Chasing New Horizons"

In the 1970s, the original version of the Voyager mission was supposed to include a Pluto flyby--and Alan Stern worked through many failed attempts to launch a Pluto mission in the decades since. (Graphic: Jason Davis/The Planetary Society) On July 14, 2015, the New Horizons spacecraft swept past Pluto, returning eye-popping images of the dwarf planet and its huge (relatively speaking) moon, Charon. At the time, the best existing images of Pluto showed nothing more than an enigmatic blur. New Horizons revealed a world of astonishing diversity: organics-coated dark patches, ice mountains, nitrogen glaciers, and methane snows, all in a state of astonishing activity considering the temperatures there are only about 40 degrees above absolute zero. The scientific bonanza from the Pluto flyby was sweet vindication for Alan Stern, principal investigator on New Horizons. Stern spent decades fighting to make a Pluto mission happen, persisting long after it seemed like a hopeless cause. Teaming up with writer and astrobiologist David Grinspoon, Stern tells the full, thorny story in his engaging new book Chasing New Horizons: Inside the Epic First Mission to Pluto. It's a a tale about space science, yes, but it's also a reminder of what can happen when you refuse to let dreams die. Myself, I've been chasing Alan for years, knowing that an interview with him would always yield a great story about scientific discovery. In addition to his work with New Horizons, he is a former NASA associate administrator, a private space entrepreneur, and the associate vice president of the Space Science and Engineering Division at Southwest Research Institute. Now he is preparing for New Horizons' next act, a visit to a mysterious Kuiper Belt object called Ultima Thule (pronounced THOOL-ee) happening this December 31. And--as you will soon see--Stern is already thinking about the next few acts after that. You’ve been through an epic experience, coming off the Pluto encounter and getting ready for Ultima Thule. How did you balance your work time with time to write this book? Alan Stern: You don't balance those things! The free perimeter in the whole equation was my sleep. I really haven't slowed down on New Horizons or the other missions I'm working on. I was on one of the instruments on Rosetta. I am on the Europa mission science team, and the new Lucy Discovery mission science team. I run Southwest Research’s commercial suborbital program. I'm also board chairman for the Commercial Spaceflight Federation. So yeah, there's a lot going on.