2014 MU69, New Horizons' next Target in the Kuiper Belt
NASA's New Horizons spacecraft captured the world's attention when it buzzed Pluto in July 2015. In January 2019, it will set another record when it reaches another object in the outer edges of the solar system. Known as 2014 MU69, the ancient object will provide insight into the early life of the sun and its planets.
Larger Kuiper Belt planets shown in relation to Pluto’s relation and the New Horizons’ path through the solar system. Credit: NASA
Both Pluto and 2014 MU69 lie within the Kuiper Belt, a collection of icy rocks that surrounds the outer reaches of the solar system. These objects are thought to be pristine samples from the early solar system, cast out into the boundary zone through gravitational interactions with the larger objects that would grow into planets.
Examining them should reveal insight into what was happening in the solar system in the first stages of its lifetime.
"2014 MU69 is a great choice because it is just the kind of ancient KBO, formed where it orbits now, that the Decadal Survey desired us to fly by," New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado, said in a statement. "Moreover, this KBO costs less fuel to reach [than other candidate targets], leaving more fuel for the flyby, for ancillary science, and greater fuel reserves to protect against the unforeseen."
Even with Hubble, details of 2014 MU69 are difficult to make out. The tiny object is estimated to be just under 30 miles (about 45 kilometers) across, less than 1 percent the size of Pluto. If the object is brighter, then it is likely smaller, while a darker object would be larger. Similar objects could have helped to build the dwarf planet in the past.
Space.com
Read more here: http://www.space.com/32049-kbo-2014-mu69.html
This diagram shows the projected route of NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft toward 2014 MU69, orbiting in the Kuiper Belt about 1 billion miles beyond Pluto.
Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI
