Resumen de Mission controller
On 14 July, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft will swoop past Pluto, the gatekeeper to a region of thousands of icy bodies known as the Kuiper belt. Alan Stern is the principal investigator for the $700 million mission—the largest and most expensive ever controlled by a non-NASA employee. Equal parts taskmaster, entrepreneur, and showman, Stern has been working for 25 years to get a spacecraft to Pluto—10 years to muster political and scientific will, 5 years to build a spacecraft, and nearly 10 years to make the trip. Like the instrument-studded spacecraft—delivered on time and on budget—Stern is packed with purpose.
