Portrait of an outsider

May 23, 2023

Arrokoth’s uniform color and composition suggests the planetoid formed from a small, homogeneous cloud of gas and dust in the primordial Solar Nebula, rather than a more widespread, mixed cloud. This January 1, 2019 photo was taken by New Horizons seven minutes before closest approach. Only a few relatively small craters can be seen.
© NASA, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Southwest Research Institute, Roman Tkachenko

Beyond Pluto are primeval boulders and ice chunks unlike anywhere else in the solar system. The New Horizons spacecraft has inspected one of them up close for the first time.

by THORSTEN DAMBECK

On New Year's Day 2019, the New Horizons spacecraft passed in
3538 kilometers minimum distance a strange object

Portrait of an outsider

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