By Jonathan O’Callaghan How did Arrokoth keep its shape?NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/Roman Tkachenko We now have not one but two explanations for how the Kuiper belt object Arrokoth, visited by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft in early 2019, was able to keep its curious two-lobed shape despite […]
Kuiper belt
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This image was taken as New Horizons approached Pluto and its moons on July 14, 2015, from a range of 22,025 miles (35,445) kilometers. It’s a composition of many images, which gives the planet rich colors. NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/Alex Parker This week marked the 90th […]
NASA On Aug. 20, 1977, NASA launched the Voyager 2 probe on a mission to explore the outer planets of our solar system. Twelve years later, having scanned Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, the 1,600-pound spacecraft completed its initial mission. But it kept going. And going. And going. Nursed farther […]
The most distant world visited by a spacecraft from Earth has been called Arrokoth and has had its portrait drawn, much to the delight of astrologers who can get a glimpse of that it looks like. Arrokoth is shaped like the twin lobes of a peanut when the US New […]
NASA’s target, Arrokoth, is a large rocky body circling the Sun on a trans-Neptunian orbit. The unusually shaped space rock is the farthest-ever object explored by a human spacecraft. The flyby gave scientists unprecedented insight into Arrokoth’s snowman-like shape, composition and even colour. Even more incredibly, the mission unfolded some […]
A computer-generated reconstruction of Arrokoth’s shape makes it look like a squashed snowman, but slightly less squashed than originally thought. (NASA / JHUAPL / SwRI Image / Roman Tkachenko) The space snowman that was the focus of a close encounter with NASA’s New Horizons probe last year is helping scientists […]
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A vaguely hourglass-shaped icy object called Arrokoth residing in the far reaches of the solar system – the most distant body ever explored by a spacecraft – is giving scientists intriguing clues about the formation of the planets including Earth. FILE PHOTO: A composite image shows the […]
Solar Orbiter launch fairing separation ESA/ATG medialab NASA is launching a European spacecraft called the Solar Orbiter toward the sun on Sunday. The Solar Orbiter is expected to capture the first images of the sun’s poles — and of the largest holes in its atmosphere. The spacecraft will also take […]