Table of Contents
BACKGROUND
- New Horizons – Interplanetary space probe Launched in 2006
- With the primary mission to perform a flyby study of the Pluto system in 2015, and a secondary mission to fly by and study one or more other Kuiper belt objects (KBOs) in the decade to follow
KUIPER BELT
NASA’S NEW HORIZON SPACECRAFT FLEW PAST ULTIMA THULE
- The New Horizon Spacecraft has flown past Ultima Thule, a object located in the Kuiper belt. This marks a new beginning in the era of exploration from the enigmatic Kuiper Belt region.
ULTIMA THULE
- A contact binary
- Composed of two planetesimals 22 km (14 mi) and 14 km (9 mi) across, nicknamed “Ultima” and “Thule”, respectively, that are joined along their major axes.
WHAT NASA FOUND
- NASA has found evidence for a unique mixture of methanol, water ice, and organic molecules on Ultima Thule’s surface–the farthest world ever explored by mankind
WHAT WE CAN SAY NOW
- “There is no doubt that the discoveries made about Ultima Thule are going to advance theories of solar system formation,” said Stern, Principal Investigator of the New Horizons mission.
HOW WAS THE SOLAR SYSTEM FORMED?
- The Nebular Hypothesis
- According to this theory, the Sun and all the planets of our Solar System began as a giant cloud of molecular gas and dust. Then, about 4.57 billion years ago, something happened that caused the cloud to collapse.
- This could have been the result of a passing star, or shock waves from a supernova, but the end result was a gravitational collapse at the center of the cloud.
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