The CLEO collaboration proposes to explore the charm sector starting early 2003. It is foreseen to collect on the order of 6 millionDD¯pairs, 300000DsD¯spairs at threshold and one billionJ/&psgr; decays. High precision charm data will enable us to validate upcoming Lattice QCD calculations that are expected to produce 1–3&percent; errors for some non‐perturbative QCD quantities. These can then be used to improve the accuracy of CKM elements. The radiativeJ/&psgr; decays will be the first high statistics data set well suited for meson spectroscopy between 1600 and 3000 MeV. © 2002 American Institute of Physics