Exploring the Kuiper Belt with New Horizons

The New Horizons spacecraft was developed to carry out an initial reconnaissance of Pluto and the Kuiper Belt. After nine and a half years of traversing the solar system, the New Horizons spacecraft flew past Pluto in July 2015 proving our first close up view of this distant world. Another three and a half years later, on New Years Day 2019, New Horizons accomplished the prime goal of its extended mission, a flyby of the cold classical Kuiper Belt Object (486958) 2014 MU69. Little was known about this object before the encounter on New Years Day. The team had searched for an object to fly past in the Kuiper belt for years with the largest ground-based telescopes. In 2014, the target for our flyby was discovered using the Hubble Space Telescope. Stellar occultation observations of 2014 MU69 refined our knowledge of its ephemeris and led to debate if 2014 MU69 was a single object or a binary. We now know, from the New Horizons images, that MU69 is a contact binary. There is distinct albedo variation with a high albedo at the connection between the two lobes of this object. Neither of the lobes of the contact binary are spherical and the larger component has a significantly flattened shape. This talk will discuss the challenges of a planetary encounter at a distance of 43 AU and also the initial results regarding MU69 including its color and the teams current satellite search results.

About the Series

The MIT Planetary Lunch Colloquium Series [PlCS] is a weekly seminar series organized within the EAPS department. Colloquia topics span the range of research interests of the department's planetary sciences research program. The seminars usually take place on Tuesdays from 12-1:30 pm in 54-517 unless otherwise noted (term-time only). Speakers include members of the MIT community and visitors. Talks are intended to appeal to graduate students, postdocs, research scientists, and faculty with a background in planetary science. A light lunch is provided.