To Pluto and Beyond

New Horizons was designed by NASA to study Pluto and the fringes of our solar system, farther away than any spacecraft has ever explored. Join science writer Elaine Scott as she tells the story of this mission.

For Stephen Hawking, New Horizons signifies that “We explore because we are human and we want to know.” This remarkable ship, no bigger than a piano, and using no more energy than a lightbulb, has already traveled three billion miles out to Pluto, and is continuing on to the Kuiper Belt, the farthest reaches of our solar system. The book will feature the beautiful, amazingly sharp photographs it is sending back from its journey, which are letting scientists fill in the blanks in our knowledge of Pluto–and delivering a few surprises along the way.

Elaine Scott tells the exciting story of everyone’s favorite planet, from Pluto’s discovery through the frustrating attempts to study such a distant object, the creation of the New Horizons project, scientists’ hopes and expectations for the mission, and what is being discovered. Her clear, engaging prose does more than narrate the events. By showing how scientists operate, their hypotheses, hopes, and disappointments, and how they make use of them, she gives readers an inspiring portrait of the scientific method itself.