Now traveling far into the Kuiper Belt, NASA’s spacecraft continues to conduct greater than 4 years after flying by its second goal, Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) Arrokoth, in 2019.
On the , mission scientists discussed the range of projects the probe is currently studying.
The spacecraft is now greater than 55 astronomical units (AU, with one AU equal to the common Earh-Sun distance, or 93 million miles) from Earth.
Mission scientists are currently trying to find a 3rd flyby goal and are studying various KBOs and dwarf planets from a distance, using a mix of ground-based telescopes and machine learning artificial intelligence software.
“We’re twice as far out from Earth as after we found Arrokoth, which makes the targets we seek for 16 times farther,” mission principal investigator Alan Stern of the in Boulder, Colorado.
One other project is looking back at Uranus and Neptune and imaging them from deep within the Kuiper Belt.
NASA’s will image the 2 ice giants at the identical time does, so scientists can view them from two very different perspectives.
“The advantage of that is that what will see is what the cloud patterns are doing that day, and similtaneously is seeing them vary as they rotate,” said mission co-investigator Will Grundy of the in Flagstaff, Arizona.
“We’re seeing light scattered in a direction that you possibly can not possibly see from Earth or the inner solar system,” Grundy said regarding the spacecraft’s unique perspective. “We’re going to take pictures because the planets rotate, in order that we will see their evolving cloud structures coming onto the part that’s lit…and rotating out because the atmosphere evolves.”
Team scientists are making the most of the spacecraft’s unique position to check the outer heliosphere, the farthest reaches of the Sun’s influence before the interstellar medium. This area is much less dusty than the inner solar system, so the probe can detect very faint signals and map the cosmic background in each optical and ultraviolet light.
While are also on trajectories out of the solar system, neither has the instruments to do these observations.
“After which, finally, we’re going to be also mapping the local interstellar medium in hydrogen light to know the cloud structures and other structures which have never been mapped before,” Stern said.
Eight years after ‘ Pluto flyby and 4 years after its Arrokoth flyby, latest discoveries are still being made about these two objects.
Data collected in 2015 indicates Pluto’s poles are usually not of their original positions, having wandered away from those locations. The formation of Sputnik Planitia, the icy left side of Pluto’s heart feature, could also be connected to those pole shifts.
Moreover, Pluto’s bladed terrain, made up of methane ice, is noticeably just like structures seen on Earth in Chile’s Atacama Desert. Surface features on Pluto’s far side suggest it too is roofed with these structures.
Arrokoth, which has a composition very like that of other distant KBOs, appears to have formed when tiny ice particles began sticking together, making a larger object. The KBO is made up of primitive material that dates back to the solar system’s earliest days.
Its two lobes are very just like each other, suggesting a typical origin that might explain the scattering of planetesimals within the outer solar system and possibly the inner as well.