Posted on 07/07/2017 1:26:29 PM PDT by BenLurkin
The frigid, faraway body that NASA's New Horizons spacecraft will zoom by 18 months from now may actually be a cluster of small objects, new observations suggest.
New Horizons — which performed the first-ever flyby of Pluto in July 2015 — will have another close encounter on Jan. 1, 2019, this time with a little-studied object called 2014 MU69.
Mission scientists recently had a chance to learn more about 2014 MU69, which lies about 1 billion miles (1.6 billion kilometers) beyond the orbit of Pluto and is thought to be 12 to 25 miles (20 to 40 km) wide. On the night of June 2, MU69 crossed in front of a distant star in a 2-second "occultation" visible from a narrow band of land and sea that stretched from the Indian Ocean through South Africa to southern Argentina and Chile.
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"The fact that we accomplished the occultation observations from every planned observing site but didn’t detect the object itself likely means that either MU69 is highly reflective and smaller than some expected, or it may be a binary or even a swarm of smaller bodies left from the time when the planets in our solar system formed," Stern added.
The team may be able to narrow down these possibilities soon. MU69 will make two more stellar occultations this month: one on July 10 and the other on July 17.
New Horizons scientists plan to use NASA's Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy — a 747 jet equipped with a 100-inch (2.5 m) telescope — to observe the July 10 event. The main goal is to hunt for debris around 2014 MU69 that could pose a danger to New Horizons during the upcoming flyby, agency officials said.
(Excerpt) Read more at space.com ...
Better than when the government probed Uranus.
They were reaching out to the Muslims there.
I’ve been in SOFIA, rather spartan in the observation deck...
Just wait until we fly past a swarm of hostile aliens who don’t want their picture taken.
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