NASA says it will extend its New Horizons mission, best known for its photos of Pluto, through 2028 or 2029.
As part of an administrative and budgetary compromise, the spacecraft will mainly study solar physics. But it may optionally investigate any nearby objects that might be discovered as it traverses the solar system’s icy outer regions.
KJZZ News spoke to Will Grundy of Lowell Observatory in 2020 about his team’s study of the peanut-shaped Kuiper Belt object, Arrokoth.
He said, compared to more violent collisions occurring in the denser inner solar system, the belt lets scientists study how planetesimals can form under calmer conditions and gentler forces.
“We're so far out in the outer solar system that it's always been cold, everything’s moving very slowly. And the Kuiper Belt is a huge, huge volume of space, so collisions are really very rare,” he said.
Grundy said comparing data from the outer and inner regions can reveal how the infant solar system clumped matter into larger objects, like asteroids, comets and planets.
“Under what circumstances does that happen?” he said. “And is it always the same mechanism everywhere in the solar system that does it? Or are there different mechanisms that happen at different times and places? Are there, you know, special places where it's more favorable to happen?”
The mission will last until New Horizons exits the Kuiper Belt, though new evidence suggests the belt might extend farther than once thought, or that a second belt might lie beyond it.
