To the Edge of the Solar System... and Beyond

"The next NASA probe on platform C will be the Pluto-Kuiper Express. Making stops at Pluto, the moon of Charon, the Kuiper ring of icedisks and all stops beyond. Arriving at Pluto at approximately 2012, departing Earth around 2003 or just as soon as we can get the technology together ..."

The Pluto Express: great name, even greater mission. Pluto and its icy near-neighbors represent the last great mystery of the solar system. These objects have never been photographed close up -- but with the arrival of the Pluto-Kuiper probe (one of those newer, leaner NASA machines) they, too, will get their moment in the spotlight.

Not that the Express is going to be the first vehicle at the edge of the solar system. In fact, it's going to get pretty crowded out there. The Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft, launched in 1977, are out there now, beyond the orbit of Pluto, racing toward the inner boundary of the sun's magnetic field, heading for a kind of demilitarized zone between the solar system and interstellar space known as the heliosheath. The moment the first Voyager penetrates this is known, rather dramatically, as Termination Shock -- and it could occur as early as 2000. A couple of years is all it will take for both Voyagers and the Pluto Express to cross the heliosheath, and then it's out into the great unknown.

Or maybe the great not-so-unknown. Just about at that time we will have launched the Terrestrial Planet Finder. Although it will simply remain in orbit around the Earth, it will seek out and scan the atmospheres of planets outside the solar system for the elements of life. Could there be other races building their own little empires out there? With luck, we'll soon know about them. —Chris Taylor

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