New Horizons: NASA's Mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt
An AIAA Distinguished Speaker Lecture, via Zoom
presented by
Alice Bowman
Space Mission Operations Group Supervisor at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory and the NASA New Horizons Mission Operations Manager
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Wednesday, March 18th, 12:00 - 1:00 PM PDT
This presentation will give an overview of NASA’s historic mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt – which culminated with the first flight past the distant dwarf planet on 14 July 2015 and the first encounter with a Kuiper Belt object (KBO) on 1 January 2019. This continuing journey will be discussed through the eyes of the APL mission operations team and some of the technical, scientific, and personal challenges of piloting the New Horizons spacecraft across the solar system on its voyage to the farthest reaches of the planetary frontier will be described.
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Alice Bowman is a member of the Principal Professional Staff at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland. She is the Space Mission Operations Group supervisor and the NASA New Horizons Mission Operations Manager (MOM). She supervises approximately 50 staff members who operate deep space and Earth-orbiting spacecraft, including NASA’s TIMED, STEREO, New Horizons, and Parker Solar Probe. As the New Horizons MOM, Ms. Bowman leads the team that controls the spacecraft that made a historic flyby of the Pluto system in July 2015. And on New Year’s 2019, just after midnight, New Horizons made history again with a flight past the Kuiper Belt object Arrokoth – the most distant flyby ever conducted, 4 billion miles from Earth. Prior to operating spacecraft, she worked in the fields of computer modeling, drug research, and long-wave detector research.
Ms. Bowman has a degree in chemistry and physics from the University of Virginia and has more than 30 years of experience in space operations. She is an AIAA Associate Fellow and has served on the International SpaceOps Committee since 2009.
The presentation will be on Wednesday, March 18th, 2026 from 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM PDT via Zoom. The Zoom link for the meeting is here.
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