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posted by janrinok on Friday February 14 2020, @10:17PM   Printer-friendly
from the why-does-Kuiper-use-a-belt,-anyway? dept.

ArsTechnica:

Following its successful rendezvous with Pluto, the New Horizons spacecraft was sent on toward a smaller object out in the Kuiper Belt. As it shot past, the spacecraft captured images of a small world [Arrokoth] consisting of two very distinct lobes, with properties that scientists found a bit confusing. But details would have to wait, as the combination of distance and power budget meant that transmitting much of New Horizons' data back to Earth was a slow process.

[...]the object is likely to be composed of material that is largely unchanged since the formation of the Solar System. And, by all indications, it is true. Evaluations of the crater density on the surface of Arrokoth is consistent with an age of four billion years, that of the Solar System itself. And the surface has the red color typical of other objects from this region of the Kuiper belt, suggesting that its surface hasn't seen significant chemical modification.

The red color seems to come from a complicated mix of longer-chain hydrocarbons collectively called tholins. These are built by chemical reactions among shorter molecules driven by radiation exposure. In Arrokoth's case, those shorter molecules appear to include methanol, a single-carbon alcohol and the only individual chemical clearly identified in the New Horizons data. Methanol could have formed by chemical reactions between methane and water, but there's only weak indications of the presence of water on Arrokoth and no clear signature of methane.

The object is of particular interest because of its age and lobed structure.


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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by takyon on Saturday February 15 2020, @01:06AM (4 children)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Saturday February 15 2020, @01:06AM (#958369) Journal

    There's nothing much more to say. It's one of the best and most clear examples of a contact binary ever, and we basically found it by random chance.

    KBOs should be more "pristine" than asteroid belt objects, with less impact craters, since they are further from the Sun and from each other.

    The best pictures of it are pretty deceiving since it has a more flattened shape and New Horizons approached it almost directly towards an axis of rotation.

    Reddish tholins seem to be a common feature of KBOs and other distant objects, like 'Oumuamua.

    Humanity may never visit this object again. However, New Horizons may be able to reach at least one more KBO with its remaining propellant, before exiting the supposed end of the Kuiper belt at around 55 AU.

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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday February 16 2020, @01:48AM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday February 16 2020, @01:48AM (#958652) Journal

    There's nothing much more to say. It's one of the best and most clear examples of a contact binary ever, and we basically found it by random chance.

    That probably means that contact binaries are relatively common among objects that are basically loose gravel or ice. I recall a few dumbbell shaped asteroids have been imaged too.

  • (Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Sunday February 16 2020, @03:12PM (2 children)

    by bzipitidoo (4388) on Sunday February 16 2020, @03:12PM (#958803) Journal

    > Humanity may never visit this object again.

    Oh, I think we will visit again, but not for a very long time. When we have probes the size of walnuts or smaller, and they last a few centuries, it'll be so cheap to probe everything that we will. In this particular case, it may be of special interest because the new data can be compared to the New Horizon's data which will by then be centuries old, and thus we can see what changes occur over a longer time span.

    It's like all those mountains that 19th century explorers said would never be climbed. In 1806, Zebulon Pike said that of the peak now named Pike's Peak in Colorado. That is only 14,110 feet, and was easily summited a mere 14 years later. Now we have automobile races to the top every year, and a cog rail line.

    • (Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday February 16 2020, @03:35PM (1 child)

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Sunday February 16 2020, @03:35PM (#958808) Journal

      If humanity visits 2014 MU69 again, it probably won't be until the 2200s or later, meaning we'll have not destroyed ourselves via nukes, robots, pestilence, etc. Shit is about to get very real. You will see computers get orders of magnitude more performance again, and "strong AI". Upheaval could follow.

      In the near term, there has been discussion of a New Horizons 2 [wikipedia.org] but nothing too concrete. Everything would go better for NASA if there is a Starship to launch payloads cheaply and orbital refueling to cut travel times, probably in half or better. Especially since the RTGs decay over the decades it would normally take to get to a target like Eris [wikipedia.org]. Another thing we can look forward to is deep space laser communications [archive.org], so that it doesn't take over a year to send back all the data from a flyby.

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      • (Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Sunday February 16 2020, @10:16PM

        by bzipitidoo (4388) on Sunday February 16 2020, @10:16PM (#958909) Journal

        Yes, very long time frames in combination with our short attention spans and lives is a general problem with us doing space exploration. None of our societies have lasted all that long. Possibly a space exploration program could survive a revolution, but that's doubtful. Only a handful of civilizations have made it to the 1000 year mark, and none have made it to 10,000.

        Basically, we're still in many ways very young. Assuming we survive, what life and civilization will be like 100,000 years from now is impossible to guess. Maybe technological advance will soon slow way down, and we would not find the society of 100k hence all that alien and unfamiliar. Or, maybe otherwise. Maybe by then, everyone will be cyborgs, with many improvements in the flesh and blood side as well. Perhaps everyone will be a lot smarter. People who are genuis by today's standards could easily be dullards by the standards of such a distant future.

        Nor have we invested much effort into creating machines that can last for millennia. For one thing, rapid technological change makes it mostly pointless. When they do last that long, it's by accident, not design.