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ByMarciaDunn The Associated Press CAPE CANAVERAL, FLA. LittlePlutoisalittlebigger than anyone imagined. On the eve of NASA's historic flyby of Pluto, sci- entists announced Monday the New Horizons space- craft has nailed the size of the faraway icy world. Measurements by the spacecraft set to sweep past Pluto on Tuesday indicate the diameter of the dwarf planet is 1,473 miles, plus or minus 12 miles. That's about 50 miles bigger than previous estimates in the low range. Principal scientist Alan Stern said this means Pluto has a lower density than thought, which could mean an icier and less rocky in- terior. New Horizons' 3 billion- mile, 9½-year journey from Cape Canaveral, Florida, culminates Tuesday morn- ing when the spacecraft zooms within 7,767 miles of Pluto at 31,000 mph. Mission managers said there's only one chance in 10,000 something could go wrong, like a debilitating debris strike, this late in the game. But Stern cautioned: "We're flying into the un- known. This is the risk we take with all kinds of explo- ration." "It sounds like science fic- tion, but it's not," Stern said as he opened a news con- ference at mission head- quarters in Maryland. "To- morrow morning a United States spacecraft will fly by the Pluto system and make history." Discovered in 1930, Pluto is the last planet in our so- lar system to be explored. It was a full-fledged planet when New Horizons rock- eted away in 2006, only to become demoted to dwarf status later that year. New Horizons has al- ready beamed back the best-ever images of Pluto and big moon Charon on the far fringes of the solar system. "The Pluto system is en- chanting in its strange- ness, its alien beauty," said Stern, a planetary scientist at Southwest Research In- stitute in Boulder, Colorado. With the encounter fi- nally at hand, it all seems surreal for the New Ho- rizons team gathered at Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory. The energy there Tuesday was described as electric. Project manager Glen Fountain said New Hori- zons, at long last, is like a freight train barreling down the track, "and you're seeing this light coming at you and you know it's not going to stop, you can't slow it down." "Of course, the light is Pluto, and we're all excited," Fountain said. Three new discoveries were revealed Monday, a tantalizing sneak preview as the countdown to clos- est approach reached the 21-hour mark. Besides the revised size of Pluto — still a solar sys- tem runt, not even one-fifth the size of Earth — scien- tists have confirmed that Pluto's north pole is indeed icy as had been suspected. It's packed with methane and nitrogen ice. And traces of Pluto's ni- trogen-rich atmosphere have been found farther from the dwarf planet than anticipated. New Hori- zons detected lost nitrogen nearly a week ago. As for pictures, the reso- lution is going to increase dramatically. Until New Ho- rizons, the best pictures of Pluto came from the Hub- ble Space Telescope. Hubble did its best from Earth or- bit, but managed to produce only crude pixelated blobs of the minuscule world. The New Horizons space- craft is the size of a baby grand piano with a salad bowl — the dish antenna — on top. It will come closest to Pluto at 7:49 a.m. EDT Tuesday. Thirteen hours later, around 9 p.m. EDT, flight controllers will learn if everything went well. The spacecraft will have sent the confirmation signal 4½ hours earlier; that's the one- way, speed-of-light, data- transit time between New Horizons and Earth. Stern expects "a little bit of drama" during closest ap- proach, when the spacecraft is out of touch with ground controllers. New Horizons cannot make observations and send back data at the same time, so scientists opted for maximum science during those most critical hours. Pluto is the largest ob- ject in the so-called Kuiper Belt, considered the third zone of the solar system af- ter the inner rocky plan- ets and outer gaseous ones. This unknown territory is a shooting gallery of comets and other small bodies; ev- ery time one of these way- ward objects smack one of Pluto's five known moons, the ejected material ends up in orbit around Pluto, thus the debris concern. An extension of the $720 million mission, not yet ap- proved, could have New Ho- rizons flying past another much smaller Kuiper Belt object, before departing the solar system. SPACE LittlePlutobiggerthanthoughtasflybylooms NASA—JHUAPL—SWRIVIAAP This image provided by NASA shows Pluto from the New Horizons spacecra . By Nancy Benac The Associated Press WASHINGTON Presi- dent Barack Obama cut the prison sentences of 46 non-violent drug offend- ers on Monday, including 14 who were sentenced to life in prison, saying "their punishments didn't fit the crime." "These men and women were not hardened crim- inals," Obama said in a video released by the White House, noting that the over- whelming majority of the 46 had been sentenced to at least 20 years. The move was part of a broader ongoing effort by the administration to make the U.S. criminal jus- tice system fairer. Obama has now issued 89 com- mutations during his pres- idency, most of them to non-violent offenders sen- tenced for drug crimes un- der outdated sentencing guidelines. A commutation leaves the conviction in place, but reduces the pun- ishment. Obama wrote a personal letter to each of the 46 in- dividuals to notify them of their commutations. Their sentences all now expire on Nov. 10, 2015. In a letter to Jerry Bailey, who was sentenced to 30 years in prison for conspir- acy to violate laws against crack-cocaine, Obama praised Bailey for showing the potential to turn his life around. "Now it is up to you to make the most of this op- portunity," Obama wrote in the letter, which was sent to Bailey's address at a federal correctional facil- ity in Georgia,. "It will not be easy," Obama said, "and you will confront many who doubt people with criminal records can change." Obama's lawyer, White House counsel Neil Egg- leston, predicted the presi- dent would issue even more commutations before leav- ing office in early 2017. But he also said that Obama's powers to fix the problem were limited, adding that "clemency alone will not fix decades of overly punitive sentencing policies." Obama this week is de- voting considerable atten- tion to the criminal justice system. He plans to lay out ideas for how to improve the fairness of the sys- tem during a speech to the NAACP in Philadelphia on Tuesday. And on Thursday, he is to become the first sit- ting president to visit a fed- eral prison when he goes to the El Reno Federal Correc- tional Institution outside of Oklahoma City. While there, he will meet with law enforcement officials and inmates. Obama said that after his commutations, there is still "a lot more we can do to re- store the sense of fairness at the heart of our justice system." CRIMINAL JUSTICE Obama commutes sentences of 46 nonviolent drug offenders By Scott Bauer and Steve Peoples The Associated Press MADISON, WIS. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker declared his candidacy for president on Monday, casting himself as a "fighter" who muscled through an aggressive con- servative agenda in a state that typically supports Democrats. The second-term gover- nor becomes the 15th high- profile Republican to enter the GOP presidential con- test, yet he says he occupies a unique space in the con- gested field. "In the Republican field, there are some who are good fighters, but they haven't won those bat- tles. And there are oth- ers who've won elections, but haven't consistently taken on the big fights. We showed you can do both," Walker said in a video re- leased by his campaign. "I am running for president to fight and win for the American people." Walker is highlight- ing his clashes with labor unions as the foundation for his candidacy. His late- afternoon announcement is set in the same conven- tion hall where he hosted his victory party after win- ning a union-backed recall election. The 47-year-old gover- nor enacted policies weak- ening organized labor's po- litical power and became the first governor in U.S. history to defeat a recall election. Now, he's work- ing to remind Republican voters about the four-year- old fight and the recall elec- tion sparked by his efforts to weaken unions — and a series of lesser-known triumphs he says set him apart from the crowded Re- publican field. "If you could accomplish half of what he's done in Wisconsin in Washington, D.C., you would go down as one of the greatest pres- idents ever," said Walker's top political adviser Rick Wiley. Walker cut income and corporate taxes by nearly $2 billion, lowered property taxes, legalized the carry- ing of concealed weapons, made abortions more dif- ficult to obtain, required photo identification when voting and made Wiscon- sin a right-to-work state. His budget this year, which plugged a $2.2 bil- lion shortfall when he signed it into law Sunday, requires drug screenings for public benefit recipi- ents, expands the private school voucher program, freezes tuition at the Uni- versity of Wisconsin while cutting funding by $250 million and removing ten- ure protections from state law. Such achievements may appeal to conservatives who hold outsized sway in Republican primaries, yet some could create chal- lenges in a general elec- tion should Walker ulti- mately become the GOP's nominee. Voter ID laws, abortion restrictions, lib- eral gun policies and ed- ucation cuts are not nec- essarily popular among swing-state independents. "Ultimately Walker has to show all these victories and political successes have shown real results," said Democratic pollster Paul Maslin. Walker's decision to run brings the number of GOP candidates to 15. Two more, Ohio Gov. John Kasich and former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore, are expected to enter the race soon. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, also seeking the party's nomination, said Monday on Fox News, "Scott's a friend, and just because we're going to be running against each other doesn't mean we aren't go- ing to be friends before and friends after." Walker's record is well- known to Wisconsin voters, a state where the second- term governor engenders fierce loyalty and fierce op- position. Protesters who first crowded the state Cap- itol in 2011 in demonstra- tions as large as 100,000 still gather daily, although only about a dozen or so at a time, to sing anti-Walker songs. 2016 CAMPAIGN Wi sc on si n Go v. 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