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The Kuiper belt (/ ˈ k aɪ p ər / KY-pər) ... The Kuiper belt was discovered with UH88, which is the fourth from the left. ... but the two images on the right ...
Pluto was discovered in 1930 by Clyde W. Tombaugh, making it by far the first known object in the Kuiper belt. It was immediately hailed as the ninth planet. However, [15]: 27 its planetary status was questioned when it was found to be much smaller than expected.
It was discovered on 17 April 2012, by a team of astronomers using one of the Magellan Telescopes in Chile during the New Horizons KBO Search in order to find a potential flyby target for the New Horizons spacecraft. [1] In December 2017, this classical Kuiper belt object was imaged by the spacecraft from afar at a record distance from Earth. [5]
Ceres, 2.8 AU in the asteroid belt; Orcus 39.4 AU, Trans-Neptunian-Kuiper belt object; Pluto 39 AU, Kuiper belt (a planet until 2006) Haumea 43 AU, Kuiper belt; Makemake 45.8 AU, Kuiper belt; Eris 95.6 AU, Kuiper belt; Gonggong Scattered disc object, 34 to 101 AU; Quaoar Kuiper belt object, 41.9 to 45.4 AU; Sedna 76 to 506 AU
The name "Kuiper belt" was given to the region in the 1980s; [9] it was first used in print by Scott Tremaine in 1988. [10]: 191 In the 1960s, Kuiper helped identify landing sites on the Moon for the Apollo program. [a] Kuiper discovered several binary stars which received "Kuiper numbers" to identify them, such as KUI 79.
Launched on January 19, 2006, the New Horizons probe is the first human-made spacecraft to explore the Kuiper belt. This uncrewed mission flew by Pluto in July 2015. The mission was extended to observe a number of other Kuiper belt objects, including a close flyby of 486958 Arrokoth on New Year's Day, 2019. [68]
During the course of the late 1990s, a number of trans-Neptunian objects were discovered, confirming the existence of a Kuiper belt. Interest in a mission to the Kuiper belt arose such that NASA instructed the JPL to re-purpose the mission as not only a Pluto flyby, but also a Kuiper belt object (KBO) flyby. The mission was thus re-branded as ...
Ixion was the largest and brightest Kuiper belt object found when it was discovered. [ 53 ] [ 21 ] [ 29 ] Under the assumption of a low albedo, it was presumed to have a diameter around 1,200 km (750 mi), which would have made it larger than the dwarf planet Ceres and comparable in size to Charon. [ 21 ]