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The National Research Council, after a year long study, has endorsed the New Horizons mission that is to explore the Kuiper Belt and Pluto. A review panel of the council concluded that sending a spacecraft to several Kuiper Belt Objects, which are one of the two main sources of comets and includes Pluto, should be NASA's highest solar-system priority in the coming decade. The study, which was released today, also recommends a Europa Geophysical Explorer (EGE) mission to place a craft in orbit around Jupiter's icy moon Europa, as well as other missions. The panel, however, made it clear that the Kuiper-Pluto mission should be the priority. The recommended missions fall into three categories "small" missions will cost less than $325 million; "New Frontiers," a category introduced by NASA's this year, will total less than $650 million and might be flown every three years; and "Flagship" missions, high-cost, once-per-decade ventures that are well suited to international participation.
The New Horizons mission could be launched as early as 2006 and reach Pluto and Charon by 2016. The mission will provide information on the nature of the outermost planet of the solar system and its large moon as well as investigating the nature of smaller objects in the Kuiper Belt. Currently little is known in detail about these distant objects. When such Kuiper Belt objects wander into the inner Solar System they become Jupiter family comets, some of which can collide with the Earth.
More info: Sky and Telescope Article
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