Skip to main content
Intellect

BYU Forum: 26 Years to Pluto with Commitment and Collaboration

In Tuesday’s campus forum, aerospace engineer and planetary scientist Alan Stern discussed the NASA mission to Pluto, New Horizons, and how his team was able to accomplish the impossible through commitment and collaboration.

Before New Horizons, the only photos that existed of Pluto were pixelated, blurry and hard to decipher. Even using the best tools, such as the Hubble Telescope, there was a limit on the amount that could be learned about the planet on the edge of the solar system.

Stern and his small team of creators thought, what if we can talk NASA into making this happen? Can we go to Pluto?

“It turned out, we could.” Stern said. “It took a long 26 years. There was not a clear path. And none of us knew how to pull it off. But because we were committed, every time we hit a setback, we dusted ourselves off and started again and again and again.”

2001-57 Alan Stern Forum 007 (1).jpg
Photo by BYU Photo

When Stern was a kid, all he wanted to do was explore space. It was his passion, driving him to get multiple master’s degrees and a doctorate that eventually led him to NASA. After being involved in dozens of planetary space missions, serving on various committees and serving as an associate administrator, Stern became the director for the New Horizons mission to Pluto, what is now one of the most celebrated projects in history.

“Pluto is a scientific bonanza,” Stern said. “We were successful in a really complex project. Every time I say that, it sounds like science fiction, but it’s not. We launched a spacecraft and flew it all the way across the solar system.”

And they did it in record-breaking time. While other projects had at least nine years to build and launch a spacecraft of this size and complication, the New Horizons team had four. If they had waited any longer, the window of opportunity wouldn’t arise until the middle of the next decade.

Stern compared the monster of a task ahead of his team to launching a golf ball from LA to a hole in New York City and expecting to achieve a hole-in-one in a single shot.

“I can’t tell you how many times I thought, ‘We are doomed. We’ve run out of ideas. We are exhausted,’” Stern said. “I was told by multiple people at NASA that this was not good for my career. But we were committed. We thought this was the chance to be a part of something legendary, the stuff of dreams.”

Achieving such a feat took over 2500 people putting in nights, weekends and overtime for over 20 years.

“If you put the right team together and you break down the barriers and trust one another, a team can achieve things that are larger than life,” Stern said.

Stern concluded by showing a photo of Pluto backlit by the sun, commenting that it’s his favorite picture from the mission.

nh-mp1_029918_destripe_large_bright.jpg

“The reason I like this picture so much is that there’s only one way to get a picture like this: You had to have accomplished the project,” Stern said. “After 26 long years, this says, ‘That team of people did it, and they did it spectacularly.’”

Next Devotional: Bonnie H. Cordon, Young Women General President

Sister Bonnie H. Cordon, Young Women General President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, will deliver the BYU Devotional on Tuesday, February 4, at 11:05 a.m. in the Marriott Center.

Her remarks will also be broadcast live on BYUtv, BYUtv.org (and archived for on-demand streaming), KBYU-TV 11, Classical 89 FM, BYU Radio and will be archived on speeches.byu.edu.

Related Articles

data-content-type="article"

BYU’s Marriott School earns high new global ranks for MBA program

February 18, 2025
The BYU Marriott School of Business MBA program comes in at No. 2 in the world for “Overall Satisfaction” according to newly released global MBA rankings from The Financial Times.
overrideBackgroundColorOrImage= overrideTextColor= overrideTextAlignment= overrideCardHideSection=false overrideCardHideByline=false overrideCardHideDescription=false overridebuttonBgColor= overrideButtonText= overrideTextAlignment=
data-content-type="article"

Air traffic control for drones: BYU engineers introduce low-cost UAV detection technology

February 10, 2025
With the exponential rise in drone activity, safely managing low-flying airspace has become a major issue. Using a network of small, low-cost radars, engineering professor Cammy Peterson and her colleagues have built an air traffic control system for drones that can effectively and accurately track anything in an identified low-altitude airspace.
overrideBackgroundColorOrImage= overrideTextColor= overrideTextAlignment= overrideCardHideSection=false overrideCardHideByline=false overrideCardHideDescription=false overridebuttonBgColor= overrideButtonText= overrideTextAlignment=
data-content-type="article"

Risk it or kick it? BYU research analyzes NFL coaches’ risk tolerance on fourth down

February 06, 2025
BYU study reveals how NFL coaches, including Super Bowl contenders Andy Reid and Nick Sirianni, weigh risk on fourth down.
overrideBackgroundColorOrImage= overrideTextColor= overrideTextAlignment= overrideCardHideSection=false overrideCardHideByline=false overrideCardHideDescription=false overridebuttonBgColor= overrideButtonText= overrideTextAlignment=
overrideBackgroundColorOrImage= overrideTextColor= overrideTextAlignment= overrideCardHideSection=false overrideCardHideByline=false overrideCardHideDescription=false overridebuttonBgColor= overrideButtonText=