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486958 Arrokoth (provisional designation 2014 MU 69; formerly nicknamed Ultima Thule [a]) is a trans-Neptunian object located in the Kuiper belt.Arrokoth became the farthest and most primitive object in the Solar System visited by a spacecraft when the NASA space probe New Horizons conducted a flyby on 1 January 2019.
2014 MT 69 (internally designated 0720090F in the context of the Hubble Space Telescope, and 7 in the context of the New Horizons mission) is a cold classical Kuiper belt object (KBO) and was formerly a potential flyby target for the New Horizons probe. [3] The object measures approximately 20–90 kilometers (12–56 miles) in diameter. [6] [4]
Before 486958 Arrokoth was discovered in 2014, Arawn was the best known target for a flyby by the New Horizons spacecraft after its Pluto flyby in 2015. [15] [16] Arawn was one of the first objects targeted for distant observations by New Horizons, which were taken on 2 November 2015. [17] More observations were made in April 2016. [7]
Going deeper into the Kuiper Belt, New Horizons is set to reach the small icy object known as 2014 MU69, which was first discovered by the Hubble telescope in June of 2014.
Kuiper belt object 486958 Arrokoth, in images taken by the New Horizons spacecraft. The only mission to date that primarily targeted a trans-Neptunian object was NASA's New Horizons, which was launched in January 2006 and flew by the Pluto system in July 2015 [32] and 486958 Arrokoth in January 2019. [33]
Trajectory of New Horizons and other nearby Kuiper belt objects 2014 PN70, imaged in January 2019 by the New Horizons space probe from a distance of 93 million km. Having completed its flyby of Pluto, the New Horizons space probe was to perform a flyby of at least one Kuiper belt object. Several potential targets were under consideration.
The New Horizons team requested, and received, a mission extension through 2021 to explore additional Kuiper belt objects (KBOs). Funding was secured on July 1, 2016. [ 160 ] During this Kuiper Belt Extended Mission (KEM) the spacecraft performed a close fly-by of 486958 Arrokoth and will conduct more distant observations of an additional two ...
Trajectory of New Horizons and other nearby Kuiper belt objects When the New Horizons spacecraft imaged 2012 HZ 84 in 2017, it was the farthest from Earth ever captured by a spacecraft. The image was taken by the spacecraft's Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on 5 December 2017 at more than 6.12 billion kilometers (40.9 AU) away from Earth.