Browsing: Arrokoth

Arrokoth, formerly known as Ultima Thule and initially designated as 2014 MU69, is a distant Kuiper Belt object that lies about 6.6 billion kilometers (4.1 billion miles) from Earth. It gained prominence when NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft conducted a flyby of the object on January 1, 2019, marking the farthest exploration of any object in the solar system. Arrokoth is composed of two lobes, giving it a snowman-like shape, and is thought to be a primordial body left over from the early solar system, offering scientists valuable insights into planetesimal formation and the processes that shaped the outer solar system. Its reddish color and relatively smooth surface suggest it has remained largely unchanged since its formation.