His parents say it was a very easy pregnancy, except for the final few weeks. Sol Alan Stern arrived on Earth in New Orleans, Louisiana, in November 1957, the first of three children born to Joel and Leonard Stern. So we begin in 1957, the year that the first spacecraft, called Sputnik, was launched into Earth orbit. Scientists don’t necessarily believe in destiny, but they do believe in good timing. They then extend, over half a century later, to the delightful discovery of a host of other worlds orbiting at the edge of our planetary system, and to an underdog proposal to NASA by a determined team of young scientists bent on historic exploration and new knowledge. They reach back to the astonishingly difficult discovery of Pluto in 1930. The New Horizons mission to Pluto had many roots. It achieved that goal through the persistence, ingenuity, and good luck of a band of high-tech dreamers who, born into Space Age America, grew up with the audacious idea that they could explore unknown worlds at the farthest frontier of our solar system. This book tells the story of a small but sophisticated machine that traveled a very, very long way (3 billion miles) to do something historic-to explore Pluto for the first time.
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