Air & Space Community Conversation: New Horizons - NASA's Mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt

Alice Bowman, the New Horizons Mission Operations Manager (MOM), will talk about the voyage of NASA’s historic mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt, which culminated with the first flight past the distant dwarf planet on July 14, 2015, and the first encounter with a Kuiper Belt object (KBO) on January 1, 2019. Alice will speak about New Horizons’ continuing journey through the eyes of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory mission operations team and describe some of the technical, scientific, and personal challenges of piloting the spacecraft across the solar system to the farthest reaches of the planetary frontier.

Bio:

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, Parker Solar Probe, and recently DART. Ms. Bowman’s experience also includes national defense space operations, systems engineering, program management, space systems, and space instrument development.

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. Asteroid 146040 Alicebowman, discovered by Marc Buie in 2000, is named after her. She is a member of the Society of Women Engineers – which recently presented her with its prestigious Resnick Challenger Medal – as well as an AIAA Associate Fellow, and has served on the International SpaceOps Committee since 2009.