When the New Horizons space probe launched, Pluto was still a planet. Just a few months later, in August 2006, the little world was notoriously demoted to a mere dwarf. But it remained the final stop on NASA's Grand Tour of the solar system's outer planets - a programme, plagued by cutbacks, that has taken decades longer to complete than anticipated. NASA, too, was demoted in 2006: it suffered swingeing budget cuts that year, and many feared it would have to forgo its more ambitious deep-space plans. Two previous Pluto missions were cancelled as the agency's budget continued to decline. New Horizons is the first of a new series of missions intended to fall between the "faster, better, cheaper" trips that now make up much of NASA's output, and the grander visions of its heyday.
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