What if you get no data back from Pluto? Fourteen years of work!
There is a lot of stuff that we are actually doing now. Our [2007] Jupiter encounter was huge. ... There was a lot of new things that came up out of that. ... The imagers, every year they take data. So it would be hugely disappointing, but I don't think the mission would be in vain. And I can't imagine us being in that position where we would not get anything
Do you have bad dreams about this?
I guess the Pluto encounter is so far away I'm not having those nightmares yet. But with the Jupiter encounter, we had a lot of press here and it was like, "Oh my God, I hope this works!" ... But there's a lot of smart people working on this project. ... You just rely on people to check everything, and after some point you just have to sit back and wait. Nobody said space exploration was easy or straightforward. And that's the beauty of this job. Every day you come in and there could be something new that is discovered.
who and what
Scientist: Alice F. Bowman
Age: 47
Hometown: Laurel
Family: Husband, Robert T. Bowman; son Noah, 17
Birthplace: Richmond, Va.
Education: University of Virginia, 1983. B.S. in physics and chemistry
Hobbies: Plays electric bass with Mountain View, a local country/bluegrass band; clarinet in the West Laurel Rag Tag Community Marching Band
Mission: New Horizons Mission to Pluto and Beyond
Launch: Jan. 19, 2006
Pluto-Charon flyby: July 2015
Voyage through Kuiper Belt: 2016-2020
Weight: 1,054 pounds (includes fuel)
Current speed (relative to sun): 40,064 mph
Current position: 964 million miles from Earth (just beyond Saturn's orbit).
Remaining distance: 1.9 billion miles
Mission cost: $700 million
