The New Horizons spacecraft is nearing its encounter with Pluto. New Horizon is a spacecraft with the primary mission to flyby Pluto and collect photographs and other data. The closest approach is expected to occur on Tuesday.
I've discussed the issue of whether Pluto is a planet elsewhere and I don't have much to add except that Alan Stern (the principle investigator of the New Horizons mission) argues that Pluto should be considered a planet. There are differences of opinion on the matter.
If you consider Pluto a planet, Pluto is the only planet which has never been visited by a planet (either landing or flyby). That is until New Horizons.
If you don't, Pluto is still an interesting place. We know very little about Pluto and New Horizons should give us a lot of new data. If fact it already has, and unless there is a major failure it will continue to do so. It will take time to analyze the data, but it is very likely we will have a new understanding of Pluto in the near future.
For more information...
Alan Stern talked about New Horizon and Pluto on NPR's Science Friday (July 10th), see http://www.sciencefriday.com/
Dr Stern gave a talk at the University of Michigan in February 2009. This talk discussed Pluto and the solar system; for a description of this talk see http://www.lowbrows.org/reflections/2009/dwarshow.5.html .
See also see this page from NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/feature/latest-images-of-pluto-from-new-horizons
Just now NASA mission control received a "phone home" message from the spacecraft. Everything is working as it should, the spacecraft passed by its closest approach about 12 hours ago, but we didn't get confirmation of that until now.
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