Kuiper Belt

Scientists have now got their hands on the latest observations of Arrokoth, the most distant body ever studied by a spacecraft, which significantly advances our understanding of how planetary bodies were formed.

The cosmic beauty of space never ceases to impress. New Atlas rounds up some of the most incredible space photos of 2019, including historic firsts, stunning starscapes, gorgeous galaxies and some new angles on our own solar system.

More than a billion miles beyond Pluto drifts a bizarre snowman-shaped world that was visited by the New Horizons probe at the beginning of the year. Originally nicknamed Ultima Thule, NASA has now officially named this Kuiper belt object “Arrokoth.”

As NASA scientists finalized their plans for the New Horizons mission in the mid 2000s, the US had already sent space probes to all of our neighboring planets between Mercury and Neptune. But dangling at very edge of the solar system was a dark and icy carrot named Pluto, the final item on a bucket list of planetary exploration.

New Horizons has sent back the clearest images of Ultima Thule to date. The new images were snapped just minutes before the spacecraft made its closest pass of the Kuiper Belt object on January 1, in what the science team calls a risky “stretch goal” of the project.

Ultima Thule's shape has been described as a bowling pin, then a snowman. Now, new images snapped as the probe sped away from the object show that Ultima Thule is more like a flat “pancake” stuck to a “dented walnut,” leaving astronomers puzzled as to how such a shape is even possible.

A team at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan has discovered a new class of object that has long been thought to exist in the Kuiper belt on the fringes of the solar system.​ It's a small body on the scale of a few kilometers.

On January 1 the New Horizons probe whizzed past Ultima Thule, a tiny world on the fringe of the solar system. The latest image shows the object closer and in higher resolution than ever before. With that improved clarity comes some intriguing new landmarks on the rocky surface.

In recent years astronomers have found evidence that there might be a huge “Planet Nine” lurking on the fringes of the solar system. A new study has now poured some cold water on the idea, instead pitching the possibility that a dusty disc is causing all the weirdness out there.

More images have returned from New Horizons, bringing Ultima Thule into sharper focus. Where yesterday’s images showed a few blurry pixels that looked like a bowling pin, the new photos reveal the rocky world to be more of a “snowman” shape, confirming it as a contact binary of two large spheres.

The New Horizons probe has successfully rendezvoused with Ultima Thule, a tiny world on the edge of the solar system. The first images have now arrived, revealing a bowling pin-shaped object that spins like a propeller.

New Horizons is just days away from its historic flyby of Ultima Thule, a mysterious object on the fringe of the solar system. Ultima now seems to be an unexpectedly “dark” world, and while there are a number of possible explanations, none of them have any precedent in the solar system.