We think this is a tight, narrow ring of rocky objects similar to those in our asteroid belt, except this ring is five AU from its star, instead of two-to-three AU, the distance between our asteroid belt and the sun.

That tells you something about its origin. Does it come from the asteroid belt or does or come from a comet? What are all the different pathways that material makes on its way to Earth? Those are the things we're interested in.

He would put on his belt so tight that it would almost cut off his circulation. He couldn't even play with simple toys like marbles or tops.

It would be helpful to have a similar type of mission go to an asteroid and compare the results, ... That mission is Deep Interior. It has been proposed in the past to NASA's Discovery program, but has not been accepted.

Pluto is just the brightest of the many objects in the Kuiper Belt. It's a fossil relic of the formation of our solar system.

We are eager to use the occultation technique to probe for atmospheres around large Kuiper belt objects.