SPACE — The New Horizons space probe was the first space probe to visit Pluto, a very distant dwarf planet. This probe, which is the fastest ever sent out of Earth.
New Horizons launched on January 19, 2006, passed the moon’s orbit in just 9 hours, and then spent 10 years crossing the 3 billion mile distance to Pluto. This probe passed Pluto in 2015.
In 2019, New Horizons passed by Arrokoth, which was later confirmed to be the most distant and primitive object in our solar system ever visited by a spacecraft.
On April 4, 2024, New Horizons’ lead scientist, Alan Stern, provided an update on the mission’s findings. He said that New Horizons had found evidence for the existence of a second Kuiper Belt.
He also said that the New Horizons team is still hopeful that ground-based searches will reveal new Kuiper Belt Objects that the spacecraft might be able to explore.
New Horizons continues to collect data around time about our sun’s shell of the galaxy, called the heliosphere. New Horizons has also transmitted this data. The probe continues to transmit data from the Kuiper Belt object Arrokoth.
“What’s interesting is that data from our dust counter instruments on board show that over the past few years, New Horizons instruments have detected a higher number of dust impacts than expected,” he said.
Why is that so interesting? Because it shows the presence of more dust at a greater distance from the sun than expected it could be evidence of an expanded Kuiper Belt, or even a second Kuiper Belt.
More Kuiper Belt Objects?
New Horizons discovered more dust than expected in the outer reaches of our solar system. Alan Stern explains that there is another possibility for high levels of dust impact in this part of the solar system.
The New Horizons team also used ground-based telescopes to search along the spacecraft’s outward trajectory for additional Kuiper Belt Objects. Those searches have led to a surprising number of very distant objects ahead of us.
“That leads to similar conclusions that the Kuiper Belt could be further expanded, or even that there is a second Kuiper Belt, still further ahead,” he said.
2024-04-12 01:46:36
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