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NASA Chooses Pluto Mission
CheshireCatCO writes: "NASA announced on Thursday that it has selected Alan Stern's Pluto mission proposal, named New Horizons, for phase B study and (hopefully) eventual launch in 2006. Alan is himself one of the top experts on Pluto, and his team consists of many other leaders in the field. It should be a good mission, if only they get the money for it." CNN has a story with some background on the mission. NASA is having a hard time deciding whether the Pluto-Kuiper Express is actually going to launch or not.
I can't think of any Mars flybys on a Jupiter mission. Galileo did a flyby of Earth and Venus (there's a really nice image of the Earth and Moon from Galileo, and Sagan detected life on Earth from Galileo, much to everyone's relief). It also flew by Ida, an asteroid, and discovered its moon, Dactyl. But I can't think of any Mars passes.
It turns out that you can go to Pluto any year (or probably any month) that you like. Larry Esposito (who had the competing proposal, which was regarded as extremely good, too) shared this with me a few months ago. Apparently, a Venus assist can get you to Pluto, and are availible a lot. But New Horizons is using a Jupiter assist that won't happen nearly as often. I'd guess that the next chance would be roughly 12 years later, when we're more or less aligned the same way again.