NASA launched the New Horizons craft on January 19, 2006. By July 24, 2015 it had covered 4.67 billion miles and transmitted a stream of amazing photos as it flew by Pluto at 32,000 miles per hour. The images made headlines in all seven continents, uniting the planet as few events do. Telling the story of the most distant planetary exploration ever undertaken, Stern, principal investigator of the mission, and Grinspoon, author of Earth in Human Hands and inaugural Chair of Astrobiology at the Library of Congress, give a detailed insiders’ account of this extraordinary project. They illuminate the science and the technical challenges, profile the key individuals, outline the political debates involved, and suggest what to expect when the New Horizons craft passes through the Kuiper Belt in January 2019.
