AIAA Los Angeles Section Town Hall Meeting 8/8 (Webinar)

Saturday, August 29, 2026, 11 AM PDT (U.S. and Canada) (GMT -0700)

Disclaimer: The views of the speakers do not represent the views of AIAA or the AIAA Los Angeles Section.

This event is not sponsored by the Lawndale Library.

“New Horizons: NASA’s Mission to Pluto & the Kuiper Belt”

This presentation is 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 on 1 January 2019. It includes looks at New Horizons’ continuing journey through the eyes of the APL mission operations team as well as the technical, scientific, and personal challenges of piloting a spacecraft across the solar system on its voyage to the farthest reaches of the planetary frontier.

Alice Bowman

Principal Professional Staff at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL)

Space Implementation Branch mission operations chief engineer

NASA New Horizons mission operations manager (MOM)

(The speaker will present remotely online.) (Webinar)

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 Implementation Branch mission operations chief engineer and the NASA New Horizons mission operations manager (MOM). She supervises and advises staff members who operate deep space and Earth-orbiting spacecraft, including NASA’s TIMED, STEREO, New Horizons, Parker Solar Probe, DART, Europa Clipper, IMAP and Dragonfly. 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. In 2022, she was presented with the Society of Women Engineers prestigious Resnick Challenger Medal. She is an AIAA Associate Fellow, and has served on the International SpaceOps Committee since 2009.

[AIAA Los Angeles Section], [contact@aiaa-lalv.org], [https://www.aiaa-lalv.org]