WRITE down everything you know about Pluto, the ninth planet in
our solar system. Odds are, you won't get very far. Even if you
are S. Alan Stern, one of the world's foremost experts on
planetary science. "I can tell you everything we know for sure
about Pluto on about three 3-by-5 file cards," says Stern, who
heads the Southwest Research Institute's space studies
department in Boulder, Colorado. "That leaves a lot of room for
discovery." Small wonder then that the excitement was palpable
as Stern's team gathered at Cape Canaveral, Florida, in late
October. It was the last formal meeting before next month's
long-awaited launch of NASA's New Horizons, the first mission to
explore Pluto and the outer solar system. The scientists were
particularly jazzed because a separate team of astronomers led
by Stern had reported just days earlier that in addition to its
large moon, Charon, Pluto has ... To continue reading this
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