2014 MU69 has two nearly-spherical lobes and is a contact binary. The collision between the two lobes happened at a low relative velocity, causing little damage to the resulting object. The "neck" between the lobes contains brighter material which appears to be dust that has settled down the slopes that run towards the point of contact.
[Added BBC link -ed]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 03 2019, @01:35PM (2 children)
The smart option, in terms of science/$, is multiple identical spacecraft sent to different targets -- let's hit Pluto, Eris, and Haumea.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday January 03 2019, @02:09PM (1 child)
That would be nice. I also want assembly line style production of better-than-Hubble space telescopes, to reduce costs. I don't think NASA will adopt the approach anytime soon though.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 03 2019, @02:57PM
we will never find the derelict alien spacecraft inside neptunes clouds *sigh*