NASA has quietly gone about changing the name of Ultima Thule – a trans-Neptunian asteroid which is the most distant thing to have ever been visited – as the name has Nazi connotations. Ultima Thule, which is officially dubbed 2014 MU69, classically refers to a mythical, far away land in medieval literature. However, the name was adopted by far-right German occultists in the 20th century to use as the fabled ancestral home of the ‘Aryan race’.
Members of the Thule Society founded a political party which later evolved to become the Nazi party.
The distant object, which is found in the Kuiper Belt – the circumstellar disk of space rocks surrounding our solar system – has been renamed Arrokoth, or “sky” in the Native American Powhatan language.
However, when announcing the name change of the object NASA did not mention the controversy.
Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator from Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado, said: “The name ‘Arrokoth’ reflects the inspiration of looking to the skies and wondering about the stars and worlds beyond our own.
“That desire to learn is at the heart of the New Horizons mission, and we’re honoured to join with the Powhatan community and people of Maryland in this celebration of discovery.”
Simon Porter, part of the team that made the discovery, told AFP that a mistake was made, however.
He said: “Basically, not enough due diligence was done.
“Historically that name was very positive and (we) realised afterwards that under certain contexts was negative.”
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The distant asteroid is remnant of the formation of the early solar system – something which led NASA to describe Arrokoth as a ‘time machine’.
New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado said at the time of the flyby: “This flyby is a historic achievement.
“Never before has any spacecraft team tracked down such a small body at such high speed so far away in the abyss of space. New Horizons has set a new bar for state-of-the-art spacecraft navigation.”