A close-up of the icy surface of Sputnik Planitia. For my daughter, Susan, who always looks toward new horizons, with love . . . Thanks to my wonderful team at Viking, Janet Pascal, Jim Hoover, and Ken Wright, for their enthusiastic support of this project and the research that went into it. Thank you, too, to Dr. Alan Stern, for interesting conversation and completely astounding revelations about Pluto and its companions in space. VIKING An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC 375 Hudson Street New York, New York 10014 First published in the United States of America by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2018 Copyright © 2018 by Elaine Scott Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Names: Scott, Elaine, date-author. Title: To Pluto and beyond : the amazing voyage of New Horizons / by Elaine Scott. Description: New York : Viking, Published by Penguin Group, [2018] | Audience: Ages 8–12. | Audience: Grades 4 to 6. | Identifiers: LCCN 2017040600 (print) | LCCN 2017042745 (ebook) | ISBN 9780451479433 (ebook) | ISBN 9781101997017 (hardcover) Subjects: LCSH: New Horizons (Spacecraft)—Juvenile literature. | Space probes—Juvenile literature. | Trans-Neptunian objects—Juvenile literature. | Pluto (Dwarf planet)—Juvenile literature. | Outer space— Exploration—Juvenile literature. Classification: LCC QB701 (ebook) | LCC QB701 .S356 2018 (print) | DDC 629.43/54922—dc23 Version_1 PHOTO CREDITS here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute; here, here, here, here, here, here, here, NASA; here, Dr. R. Albrecht, European Space Agency/ESO Space Telescope European Coordinating Facility/NASA; here, NASA/Aubrey Gemignani; here, SwRI/JHUAPL; here, here, here, Lowell Observatory Archives; here, NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory-Caltech; here, NASA/Charles Bolden; here, Lunar and Planetary Institute at the University of Arizona; here, MIT/Erlend Aas/Kavli Prize; here, European Southern Observatory; here, NASA/Space Telescope Science Institute; here, NASA/JPL/Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Roman Thachenko; here, here, NASA/JPL/University of Arizona; here, NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team, Space Telescope Science Institute/Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy; here, NASA/ESA/G. Bacon Space Telescope Science Institute; here, JHUAPL; here, NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI/Henry Throop; here, NASA/SpacePlace; here, J. Bally (University of Colorado) and H. Throop (SwRI); here, NASA/ESA CONTENTS TITLE PAGE DEDICATION ACKNOWLEDGMENTS COPYRIGHT PHOTO CREDITS INTRODUCTION CHAPTER ONE ABOUT NEW HORIZONS CHAPTER TWO ABOUT PLUTO CHAPTER THREE WHERE IN THE WORLD IS PLUTO? CHAPTER FOUR TO PLUTO AND BEYOND CHAPTER FIVE A STAR OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM CHAPTER SIX BEYOND THE NEXT HORIZON FURTHER READING INDEX ABOUT THE AUTHOR INTRODUCTION The Atlas 5 rocket that launched New Horizons, with its boosters, weighed 2,451,810 pounds at launch and was 196 feet tall. ON JANUARY 19, 2006, at precisely 2:00 p.m., a spacecraft—the fastest ever launched from Earth—roared off Complex 41 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. In forty-two minutes it was traveling at an astonishing 36,373