NASA finally decided to launch a spacecraft called New Horizons to Pluto on January 19,2006. According to NY times, the spacecraft will reach Pluto in nine years and will travel about a three billion mile journey to the edge of the solar system. The $700 million mission will go through Jupiter where it will be taken by its  powerful gravitational field and then it will be fired like a slingshot and hopefully be on its way to Pluto. The New Horizons is powered by a small plutonium-fired electric generator. Its instruments include three cameras, for visible-light, infrared and ultraviolet images, and three spectrometers to study the composition and temperatures of Pluto’s thin atmosphere and surface features. Once near its target, the New Horizons is to conduct about five months of studies, including a close approach dash that takes it within 6,200 miles of Pluto’s surface and 16,800 miles from the planet’s large moon, Charon. The craft will also study the two smaller moons P4 and P5. The mission is also to continue past Pluto, possibly visiting large objects in the Kuiper Belt. The expected date to Pluto is July 14, 2015. So if everything goes according to plan, we will finally have all of our questions answered. Only time will tell.