New Horizons Science in The Kuiper Belt

The New Horizons spacecraft, flew by KBO 2014 MU69, or 'Ultima Thule,' by 12:33 a.m. EST on 2019 Jan. 1, at a distance of 2,200 miles (3,500 km) from the object's surface as Ultima Thule was lying by some 4 billion miles (6.5 billion kilometers) from the Sun and the craft moving by more than 32,000 miles (51,000 kilometers) per hour. That represented the most distant planetery flyby ever, and the first mission to a KBO! The operations room at the John Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland received confirmation of the flyby 10 hours after the flyby, which time was needed for data to travel back Earth as signal acquisition showed that all the New Horizons parameters were nominal! Latest -- pixelized -- views of MU69 before the flyby, confirmed one of two shape possibilities to the KBO, a bilobate object that is, a shape which looks frequent in the Kuiper Belt altogether in the Asteroid Belt, along with binary objects. By October 2016, once data about Pluto completely downloaded, two onboard recorders were erased, and clearing space for new data to be taken during the New Horizons Kuiper Belt Extended Mission (KEM) as the 2014 MU69 was chosen by the Hubble Space Telescope. The KBOs Hubble had found like specific targets, were each about 10 times larger than typical comets, but only about 1-2 percent of the size of Pluto. The KEM extension allowed also New Horizons to observe twice KBO 1994 JR1, a 90-mile-wide (145-kilometer-wide) object (KBO) orbiting at more than 3 billion miles (5 billion kilometers) from the Sun. The New Horizons spacecraft will now continue downloading images and other data in the days and months ahead, after a lull in the days coming due to a conjonction with the Sun, completing the return of all science data over the next 20 months. The exploration of the Kuiper Belt is now scheduled until at least 2021. The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, designed, built and operates the New Horizons spacecraft, and manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. The Southwest Research Institute, based in San Antonio, leads the science team, payload operations and encounter science planning

	New Horizons timetable at KBO 2014 MU69, or Ultima Thule. picture courtesy site 'Amateur Astronomy'
	KBO 2014 MU69 as seen during both last days before flyby. Its elongated and bilobate shape turning apparent!. picture courtesy site 'Amateur Astronomy'
	This image (left) is the first most detailed of 2014 MU69 returned by the New Horizons spacecraft, as taken at 5:01 Universal Time on January 1, 2019, just 30 minutes before closest approach, from a range of 18,000 miles (28,000 kilometers), with an original scale of 459 feet (140 meters) per pixel. We resized that picture (upper right) as the color image (lower right) -also resized by us- had been taken at a distance of 85,000 miles (137,000 kilometers), about one hour before. Those picture confirmes the bilobate shape of the KBO, which is a 'contact binary' consisting of two connected spheres, with a measure end to end of 19 miles (31 kilometers) in length. The team has dubbed the larger sphere 'Ultima' and the smaller 'Thule,' referring to 'Ultima Thule,' the unoffical name which had been given to the KBO. The formation of MU69 occurred at 1 percent into the history of the solar system, and the collision between both objects only at a small speed. Such a object highlights how the solar system's planets began to form. picture courtesy site 'Amateur Astronomy' based upon pictures NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute
	The propeller-like rotation of Ultima Thule is seen with that animated gif as New Horizons is getting closer to the KBO! The animation was made from pictures taken between 20:00 UT (3 p.m. ET) on Dec. 31, 2018, and 05:01 UT (12:01 a.m.) on Jan. 1, 2019. picture courtesy NASA/Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/National Optical Astronomy Observatory

First findings made by the mission science team after the flyby are that: Ultime Thule features no moons, nor rings, or no atmosphere. MU69's color fits into the color of similar Kuiper Belt objects as such a color might be linked to tholins, or hydrocarbons exposed to sunlight over billions of years. Ultima Thule belongs to a class of Kuiper belt objects called the 'cold classicals,' which have nearly circular orbits with low inclinations to the ecliptic, and which have not been perturbed since their formation about 4.6 billion years ago. Ultima Thule receives only about 0.05 percent of light from the Sun than Earth does. As the spacecraft, as seen from Earth, will look like passing behind the Sun, transmission of data now will resume Jan. 10, 2019 only as a 20-month period of downloads will begin, until late summer 2020. Ultima Thule is the first unquestionably primordial contact binary ever explored and never anything like this had been seen anywhere in the solar system. That is also a help to understand how planetesimals -- the building blocks of the planets -- formed. Apparently Ultima Thule's two lobes once orbited each other, like many so-called binary worlds in the Kuiper Belt, until something brought them together in a gentle merger as much of their orbital momentum must have been drained away somehow. Before the merger the two lobes must have become tidally locked. In color and composition, Ultima Thule resembles many other objects found in its area of the Kuiper Belt. It's very red -- and in fact the reddest outer solar system object ever visited, due to modification of the organic materials on its surface composed of methanol, water ice, and organic molecules, a mixture very different from most icy objects explored Ultima Thule. Arrokoth is extremely red, probably because cosmic rays have blasted its surface to create red organic molecules. Ultima Thule has been found a 'ultra red object,' redder than Pluton and the same color as many other so-called 'cold classical' KBOs, cold referring to the circular, uninclined orbits of these objects and classical in that their orbits have changed little since forming, and representing a primordial sample of the primordial Kuiper Belt. New Horizons scientists have also seen evidence for methanol, water ice and organic molecules on the surface, a spectrum similar to some of the most extreme objects seen in the outer solar system Ultima Thule est le premier objet binaire de contact (en anglais, "primordial contact binary")

	That image is the clearest view yet of Ultima Thule and taken when the KBO was 4,200 miles (6,700 kilometers) from the spacecraft, at 05:26 UT (12:26 a.m. EST) on Jan. 1, 2019, just seven minutes before closest approach. It features a original resolution of 440 feet (135 meters) per pixel. Impact craters seen might also be features resulting from other processes, such as 'collapse pits,' or the ancient venting of volatile materials. Unexplained also is the circular mark on the larger lobe. picture courtesy NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute
	New results derived from MU69 images after New Horizons flyby, clearly show that Ultima and Thule are much flatter than originally believed. The snowman aspect was derived from the approach period. check a animation showing the transition between both views. picture courtesy NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute
	A 'stretch goal', a image just 6 and half minutes before the spacecraft's closest approach at 12:33 a.m. EST on Jan. 1, 2019. That picture has a resolution of about 110 feet (33 meters) per pixel. Among features pictured are several bright, enigmatic, roughly circular patches of terrain. In addition, many small, dark craters near the terminator (the boundary between the sunlit and dark sides of the body) are better resolved. picture courtesy NASA/Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute, National Optical Astronomy Observatory

NASA, by November 2019, decided to rename 2014 MU69, the first Kuiper Belt object visited by a manmade spacecraft, NASA's New Horizons. The name 'Ultima Thule,' which had first been given to the KBO, triggered a controverse as it might be associated with Nazi vocabulary and their occultists, as that location was considered the origine of the 'Aryan' race. A new name, 'Arrokoth,' was chosen by the New Horizons team. That means 'sky' in the language of Amerindian tribe of the Powhatans. The new name was officially released by NASA which however didn't mention the controverse. The Hubble telescope team -- the Hubble had discovered 2014 MU69 by 2014 -- along with the New Horizons one are both located in the U.S. state of Maryland and the region of the Chesapeake Bay still harbours Powhatans. NASA answered to a question that it never considered the name 'Ultima Thule' like else that a temporary surname. Arrokoth is classified as a member of the dynamically cold, non-resonant cold classical KBO (CCKBO) population, and is probably a member of the tight orbital clustering of CCKBOs known as the kernel. There is no known mechanism for transporting the majority of these objects onto these nearly circular orbits, so they are thought to have formed in situ and remained dynamically undisturbed since the formation of the Solar System. Due to the low impact rates and low temperatures in the Kuiper Belt, CCKBOs are also thought to be physically primitive bodies. Arrokoth formed during the gravity-driven collapse of a cloud of solid particles in the primordial solar nebula, rather than by hierarchical accretion leading to a planetesimal