We're Going to Pluto!

According to the latest Planetary Society newsletter, funding has been approved for a space probe mission called New Horizons whose purpose will be to investigate the planet Pluto and the Kuiper Belt (a collection of icy objects orbiting the sun in the general vicinity of Pluto which may well provide important clues to the early history of the solar system). This is very cool, because Pluto is the one planet in the solar system which so far has not been visited by human-made spacecraft, something that has always seemed to me to be rather a sad oversight. More information on the project, as well as lots of interesting facts about Pluto and the Kuiper belt, can be found on the New Horizons website.