NASA’s New Horizons Team Publishes First Kuiper Belt Flyby Science Results

Most distant object ever explored presents mysteries of its formation, NASA reports.

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NASA’s New Horizons mission team has published the first profile of the farthest world ever explored, a planetary building block and Kuiper Belt object called 2014 MU69.

Analyzing just the first sets of data gathered during the New Horizons spacecraft’s New Year’s 2019 flyby of MU69 (nicknamed Ultima Thule) the mission team quickly discovered an object far more complex than expected. The team publishes the first peer-reviewed scientific results and interpretations – just four months after the flyby – in the May 17 issue of the journal Science.

NASA reports that the world is a contact binary, and when it comes to color and composition, "Ultima Thule resembles many other objects found in its area of the Kuiper Belt." The team believes it's reddish hue "...to be caused by modification of the organic materials on its surface New Horizons scientists found evidence for methanol, water ice, and organic molecules on Ultima Thule’s surface – a mixture very different from most icy objects explored previously by spacecraft."