NASA's New Horizons spacecraft - en route toward mankind's first reconnaissance of the solar system's most remote planetary outpost - is speeding away from Earth at about 36,000 mph following its launch on Jan. 19. It passed the Moon's orbit less than 9 hours after liftoff, and is now more than 7 million miles from Earth. It is expected to pass Mars' orbit on April 6 and Jupiter's by the spring of 2007 - all in record time. The high speed - this is the fastest spacecraft ever launched from Earth - is needed to reach Pluto by 2015.

If you'd like to follow its progress as we all grow older during this mission, you can do it here.

And while we're on the subject of cool Web sites, here's a link that provides a remarkable sound-and-video glimpse of NASA's Stardust mission as its return capsule streaked in through the atmosphere recently. It was shot from a NASA chase plane. The capsule was carrying bits of interstellar dust and comet dust it had collected for planetary scientists. The package landed safely by parachute in the Utah desert. It is now being studied at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.