486958 Arrokoth[b] (provisional designation 2014 MU69 ; formerly nicknamed Ultima Thule[c]) is a trans-Neptunian object located i

486958 Arrokoth - Wikipedia

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2023-03-25 06:30:02

486958 Arrokoth[b] (provisional designation 2014 MU69 ; formerly nicknamed Ultima Thule[c]) is a trans-Neptunian object located in the Kuiper belt. Arrokoth became the farthest and most primitive object in the Solar System visited by a spacecraft when the NASA space probe New Horizons conducted a flyby on 1 January 2019.[20][21][22] Arrokoth is a contact binary 36 km (22 mi) long, composed of two planetesimals 21 and 15 km (13 and 9 mi) across, that are joined along their major axes. With an orbital period of about 298 years and a low orbital inclination and eccentricity, Arrokoth is classified as a cold classical Kuiper belt object.

Arrokoth was discovered on 26 June 2014 by astronomer Marc Buie and the New Horizons Search Team using the Hubble Space Telescope as part of a search for a Kuiper belt object for the New Horizons spacecraft to target in its first extended mission; it was chosen over two other candidates, 2014 OS393 and 2014 PN70 , to become the primary target of the mission.[23]

When Arrokoth was first observed by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2014, it was designated 1110113Y in the context of the telescope's search for Kuiper belt objects,[24] and was nicknamed "11" for short.[25][26] Its existence as a potential target of the New Horizons probe was announced by NASA in October 2014[27][28] and it was unofficially designated as "Potential Target 1", or PT1 .[26] Its official provisional designation, 2014 MU69 , was assigned by the Minor Planet Center in March 2015, after sufficient orbital information had been gathered.[26] The provisional designation indicates that Arrokoth was the 1745th minor planet to be assigned a provisional designation during the second half of June 2014.[d] After further observations refining its orbit, it was given the permanent minor planet number 486958 on 12 March 2017.[30]

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