Mission to Pluto is a Starred Success!

By Mary Kay Carson

🌟Read the starred Kirkus review!🌟

Happy New Year to you and happy new book to me! ☺

Mission to Pluto: The First Visit to an Ice Dwarf and the Kuiper Belt is out January 10th. The book is about the first ever spacecraft mission to visit Pluto and the surprising discoveries it made. The plucky piano-sized probe New Horizons reached Pluto in 2015 after a 9½-year journey. The book follows the team of scientists as they build, launch, and fly New Horizons three billion miles to finally arrive at the Pluto system of an ice dwarf planet and its five moons.

Get Ready For Pluto!

By Mary Kay Carson 
 
It's almost Pluto time! On Tuesday July 14th at 7:49AM EDT the first-ever spacecraft to visit Pluto will make its closest approach. New Horizons is a robotic spacecraft about the size of a grand piano. It left Earth way back in 2006 and has been speeding across the solar system ever since. After nine and a half years and three billion miles (that's billion with a B, folks), New Horizons is finally in the home stretch. Planetary scientists and astronomers are already collecting data and images never before possible. We will all learn lots of new amazing facts about Pluto, its big moon Charon, and the system's four little moons Nix, Styx, Kerberos, and Hydra. You'll be able to read all about the discoveries in my upcoming 2016 Scientists in the Field book, Mission to Pluto!