CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - A small spacecraft bound for Pluto was being prepared for transfer to the launch pad on Friday in preparation for blastoff next month, NASA officials said.
New Horizons is the centerpiece of a $650 million mission to explore the last of the solar system's original nine planets. Scientists recently have discovered hundreds of Pluto-like objects orbiting more than 50 times farther away from the sun than Earth.
NASA is giving New Horizons one of the biggest boosts into space money can buy.
The small probe, which weighs about 1,000 pounds (454 kg) and is about the size of a grand piano, will be carried into orbit by a Lockheed Martin heavy-lift Atlas launch vehicle outfitted with five solid-rocket boosters, a Centaur liquid-fuel upper stage and a STAR 48B solid-fuel third stage -- equipment more commonly used for hefty communications satellites than relatively petite science probes...
...The probe contains 24 pounds (10.9 kg) of plutonium pellets, which will provide power through radioactive decay. Due to Pluto's distance from the sun, solar power is not a viable option.
Scientists will have to wait at least 9-1/2 years to begin studying the scientific data the probe beams back, and even longer if New Horizons misses the opening of its launch period on January 11...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051216/ts_nm/space_pluto_dc_1I hope I live long enough to see the results of this mission.