Alan Stern

New Horizons' Principal Investigator Alan Stern gives an update on the mission's progress toward Pluto.

New Horizons has just completed a summer of intensive activities and entered hibernation on Aug. 20. The routine parts of the activities included thorough checkouts of all our backup systems (result: they work fine!) and of all our scientific instruments (they work fine too!).

Back in 2005 and 2006, when Pluto’s second and third moons (Nix and Hydra) were discovered, searches by astronomers for still more moons didn’t reveal any. So the accidental discovery of Pluto’s fourth moon by the Hubble Space Telescope in mid-2011 raised the possibility that the hazards in the Pluto system might be greater than previously anticipated.

Creators of an outstanding new collection of poems about spaceflight and exploration join Mat Kaplan to talk about the book as Bill Nye and other notables read selections.

NASA’s planetary protection officer joined Mat Kaplan’s Humans to Mars summit panel for a great conversation about protecting worlds throughout the solar system from what could be devastating contamination.

Principal Investigator Alan Stern returns on the 5th anniversary of the New Horizons encounter with Pluto to tell us about the wealth of knowledge the spacecraft is still sending home from across the solar system.