Smithsonian Honors Alumnus
On Tuesday, April 5, 2016, the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum honored NASA’s New Horizons Mission Team, led by Alan Stern ’75, with its 2016 Current Achievement Trophy. The New Horizons team was praised for their historic flyby of Pluto and continued research of Kuiper Belt objects.
“The New Horizons Mission Team led by Principal Investigator Alan Stern, has accomplished the first direct investigation of Kuiper Belt objects in the outer solar system,” the Museum’s citation read. “New Horizons imaged water-ice mountains as high as the Rockies, giant sheets of exotic ices that exhibit glacier-like flow, and chasms deeper and wider than the Grand Canyon. The mission is yielding fundamental insights into the origins and evolution of the solar system.”
As the spacecraft slowly beams back photos and data from its flyby, the New Horizons team is constantly releasing new discoveries about the dwarf planet. The team is also preparing for the spacecraft’s extended mission of exploring objects in the Kuiper Belt, the solar system’s outer region. In October 2015, a series of maneuvers put the spacecraft on an intercept course with MU69, a 30 mile-wide object orbiting at the very edge of our solar system. Pending NASA approval of its extended mission, New Horizons will pass by MU69 in January 2019.
“We flew nine and a half years and three billion miles to get to our target: the Kuiper Belt. Not just Pluto. The Kuiper Belt,” Stern said during his presentation at last month's Lunary and Planetary Science Conference in Houston. “The centerpiece of our extended mission proposal is a close flyby of a small Kuiper Belt object discovered by the Hubble Space Telescope for New Horizons.”
The Current Achievement Trophy is presented by the National Air and Space Museum to recognize significant contribution to or achievement in the history of air and space exploration. Past recipients include other NASA planetary mission teams, including the Mars Pathfinder and Voyager Spacecraft.
Since graduating in 1975, Alan Stern has returned to campus several times, including as the 2006 Robert E. Dennard Visiting Scholar, the 2008 Commencement Speaker, the 2009 Distinguished Alumnus Award recipient, and as a panelist of the inaugural STEM Conference in 2013. He also surprised faculty at the beginning of the 2015-2016 school year with a special Skype call, just weeks after the historic Pluto flyby.
Read more about the achievement of Stern and his team in the latest issue of The Pride.
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Alan Stern ’75 oversees the Pluto flyby
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The latest stunning image of Pluto beamed back by New Horizons
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St. Mark’s School of Texas is a private, nonsectarian college-preparatory boys’ day school for students in grades 1 through 12, located in Dallas, Texas. St. Mark’s aims to prepare young men to assume leadership and responsibility in a competitive and changing world.
St. Mark’s does not discriminate in the administration of its admission and education policies on the basis of race, color, religion, sexual orientation, or national or ethnic origin.
St. Mark’s does not discriminate in the administration of its admission and education policies on the basis of race, color, religion, sexual orientation, or national or ethnic origin.
