To Pluto and Beyond: The Amazing Voyage of New Horizons

68 Pages·2018·30.34 MB·English

by  Elaine Scott

A close-up of the icy surface of Sputnik Planitia.

For my daughter, Susan, who always looks toward
new horizons, with love . . .
Thanks to my wonderful team at Viking, Janet Pascal, Jim Hoover, and Ken Wright, for their enthusiastic
support of this project and the research that went into it. Thank you, too, to Dr. Alan Stern, for interesting
conversation and completely astounding revelations about Pluto and its companions in space.
VIKING
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First published in the United States of America by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2018
Copyright © 2018 by Elaine Scott
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Names: Scott, Elaine, date-author.
Title: To Pluto and beyond : the amazing voyage of New Horizons / by Elaine Scott.
Description: New York : Viking, Published by Penguin Group, [2018] |
Audience: Ages 8–12. | Audience: Grades 4 to 6. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2017040600 (print) | LCCN 2017042745 (ebook) | ISBN
9780451479433 (ebook) | ISBN 9781101997017 (hardcover) Subjects: LCSH: New Horizons (Spacecraft)—Juvenile literature. | Space
probes—Juvenile literature. | Trans-Neptunian objects—Juvenile literature. | Pluto (Dwarf planet)—Juvenile literature. | Outer space—
Exploration—Juvenile literature.
Classification: LCC QB701 (ebook) | LCC QB701 .S356 2018 (print) | DDC
629.43/54922—dc23
Version_1
PHOTO CREDITS
here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, NASA/Johns
Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute; here, here, here, here, here,
here, here, NASA; here, Dr. R. Albrecht, European Space Agency/ESO Space Telescope European
Coordinating Facility/NASA; here, NASA/Aubrey Gemignani; here, SwRI/JHUAPL; here, here, here,
Lowell Observatory Archives; here, NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory-Caltech; here, NASA/Charles
Bolden; here, Lunar and Planetary Institute at the University of Arizona; here, MIT/Erlend Aas/Kavli Prize;
here, European Southern Observatory; here, NASA/Space Telescope Science Institute; here,
NASA/JPL/Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Roman Thachenko; here, here, NASA/JPL/University of Arizona; here,
NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team, Space Telescope Science Institute/Association of Universities
for Research in Astronomy; here, NASA/ESA/G. Bacon Space Telescope Science Institute; here, JHUAPL;
here, NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI/Henry Throop; here, NASA/SpacePlace; here, J. Bally (University of
Colorado) and H. Throop (SwRI); here, NASA/ESA
CONTENTS
TITLE PAGE
DEDICATION
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
COPYRIGHT
PHOTO CREDITS
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER ONE
ABOUT NEW HORIZONS
CHAPTER TWO
ABOUT PLUTO
CHAPTER THREE
WHERE IN THE WORLD IS PLUTO?
CHAPTER FOUR
TO PLUTO AND BEYOND
CHAPTER FIVE
A STAR OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM
CHAPTER SIX
BEYOND THE NEXT HORIZON
FURTHER READING
INDEX
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
INTRODUCTION
The Atlas 5 rocket that launched New Horizons, with its boosters, weighed 2,451,810 pounds at launch and was 196 feet
tall.
ON JANUARY 19, 2006, at precisely 2:00 p.m., a spacecraft—the fastest ever
launched from Earth—roared off Complex 41 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force
Station in Florida. In forty-two minutes it was traveling at an astonishing 36,373