Chasing New Horizons to Pluto with Alan Stern and David Grinspoon

Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science

The Planetary Society

Technology, Science

4.8 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 23 May 2018

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The New Horizons mission was a triumph, revealing Pluto as an utterly unique and beautiful world. But the mission first had to survive challenge after challenge, fighting to be developed, meeting a nearly impossible launch deadline, and then narrowly avoiding disaster when it was barely a week from its destination. The entire dramatic tale has now been told by Principal Investigator Alan Stern and his co-author, astrobiologist David Grinspoon. They join Mat Kaplan to talk about their book, Chasing New Horizons—Inside the Epic First Mission to Pluto. A signed copy of the book will go to the winner of this episode’s space trivia contest. Emily Lakdawalla has returned from an international gathering of Mercury scientists with a special report. The Planetary Society’s Senior Editor also marks the launch of a Chinese lunar orbiter. Learn more about this week’s topics and see images here: http://www.planetary.org/multimedia/planetary-radio/show/2018/0523-stern-grinspoon-chasing-new-horizons.htmlLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Chasing New Horizons to Pluto this week on planetary radio.
0:09.0	Welcome, I'm at Kaplan of the Planetary Society
0:12.0	with more of the human adventure across our solar system and beyond.
0:17.0	Alan Stern is back. The leader of the New Horizons journey to Pluto has co-written a dramatic chronicle of that mission. is famous Griffith Observatory right after we check in with the Planetary Society's senior editor Emily Lochuala.
0:37.0	Then stay with us for the first of several opportunities to win a signed edition of
0:42.0	Alan and David's great book when Bruce Betts presents
0:45.1	this week's What's Up Space Trivia Contest. Emily you have this long piece about
0:50.5	a Mercury meeting that you attended. It is classic
0:54.0	Lochuwala reporting. Tell us about the first of all,
0:57.0	Beepi Colombo, the mission that will be leaving before too long for
1:00.7	mercury. Yes, this is an exciting mission, exciting in part because it will only be the third mission
1:06.2	ever to visit Mercury.
1:08.0	I wonder if we should count it though as the third and fourth mission because there's actually
1:12.0	separate spacecraft, two of them built by the European
1:15.4	Space Agency, one by the Japanese Space Agency.
1:18.8	They will take nearly a decade to get to Mercury and then enter into separate orbits there. The Japanese one is focused on the
1:25.9	magnetosphere and the exosphere and the European one is focused more close in on topography and geology and all the other stuff that you need to do
1:35.8	close into a planet. It's going to be a really powerful follow-on to the initial reconnaissance
1:41.2	of the messenger mission, which ended a few years ago.
1:44.4	We should remind people it's really hard to get to mercury without falling into the sun,
1:49.6	slowing down enough to go into orbit. Yeah, it's really difficult because Mercury is very deep in the sun's gravity well.
1:56.4	And so I don't know if you guys can remember that kind of game where you roll a coin at usually
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