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Like getting away from it all? Pluto must be one of the loneliest places of all. For more 70 years it was counted as the ninth planet, an isolated but sentimental favourite at the end of the Solar System. But in recent years it has been at the centre of a neighbourhood dispute of cosmic proportions. Just what on Earth caused Pluto to be struck off as a planet? It now seems that Pluto has company… and lots of it. And it’s changed the way we think about our Solar System and even how we all came to be here.

We now know that Pluto is just one of a swarm of frozen bodies beyond Neptune, a vast disc of ice and rock known as ‘The Kuiper Belt’. Out here are oceans of frozen water and planetary spare parts that were hurled to the edge of space when the Solar System first formed. Every so often one of these planetary popsicles comes in from the cold. Most comets pass harmlessly by and merely soak up the Sun. Other times they pay us a more personal visit – and one with a big impact. It’s one such intruder that may have ended the reign of the dinosaurs, 65 million years ago.

Comets can deliver death, but they also come bearing gifts. After studying these rampaging tourists, we now know the outer Solar System is awash with primitive, carbon-bearing molecules that are found in the DNA of every living creature on Earth. It’s likely these cosmic couriers from the Kuiper Belt not only delivered the crucial ingredients to kick-start life here, but also to all the other planets and moons in our Solar System.

Although Pluto remains a distant, fuzzy dot of light at the end of our best telescopes, in 2015 all that will change. Right now, a lonely little spacecraft, known as New Horizons, is making its way to the end of our neighbourhood. And onboard is a very special passenger indeed - the cremated remains of Pluto’s discoverer, Clyde Tombaugh. But Clyde will not rest at Pluto; his destiny is to become humanity’s longest space traveller as New Horizons keeps flying eternally outward to the Universe beyond.

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