Final destination chosen for New Horizons
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.029165
Nature : After passing by Pluto last month, NASA’s New Horizons had enough fuel to adjust its course to visit another body in the Kuiper belt, but its second destination had yet to be chosen. On 28 August, NASA announced that the craft would target 2014 MU69, with an expected arrival date of 1 January 2019. The New Horizons team found 2014 MU69 with the Hubble Space Telescope. All that is known about it is that it is a “cold classical” Kuiper belt object (KBO) with a diameter of 45 km. Unlike Pluto, KBOs have relatively circular orbits, undisturbed by the giant planets in the outer solar system. New Horizons will pass within 12 000 km of 2014 MU69, as close as it passed Pluto. Afterward, it will continue to take pictures of other KBOs but at a distance of about 15 million km.