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

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 educators, Native American tribal leaders team up to enrich Utah elementary arts programs

September 14, 2023
The BYU ARTS Partnership, part of the David O. McKay School of Education, began 16 years ago to increase the quality and quantity of arts education through dance, drama, music and visual art in elementary schools. The NACI is one of its four initiatives.
overrideBackgroundColorOrImage= overrideTextColor= overrideTextAlignment= overrideCardHideSection=false overrideCardHideByline=false overrideCardHideDescription=false overridebuttonBgColor= overrideButtonText= overrideTextAlignment=
data-content-type="article"

Female judges, especially women of color, cited far less frequently than male judges

September 12, 2023
Researchers from UNC Charlotte, University of Louisville, University of Georgia and Brigham Young University analyzed how the race and gender of federal judges might be impacting judicial processes. Specifically, they wanted to see which types of judges get the most attention from their peers when they have complete discretion to reference another judge’s work.

overrideBackgroundColorOrImage= overrideTextColor= overrideTextAlignment= overrideCardHideSection=false overrideCardHideByline=false overrideCardHideDescription=false overridebuttonBgColor= overrideButtonText= overrideTextAlignment=
data-content-type="article"

BYU is one of the top universities in the nation, according to new Wall Street Journal rankings

September 06, 2023
BYU comes in at No. 20 overall in the newly released 2024 Best Colleges in America rankings from The Wall Street Journal and College Pulse, joining the likes of Princeton, MIT, Yale, Stanford and Harvard in the top 25.
overrideBackgroundColorOrImage= overrideTextColor= overrideTextAlignment= overrideCardHideSection=false overrideCardHideByline=false overrideCardHideDescription=false overridebuttonBgColor= overrideButtonText= overrideTextAlignment=
overrideBackgroundColorOrImage= overrideTextColor= overrideTextAlignment= overrideCardHideSection=false overrideCardHideByline=false overrideCardHideDescription=false overridebuttonBgColor= overrideButtonText=