{"id":90957,"date":"2019-05-19T06:42:38","date_gmt":"2019-05-19T13:42:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/05\/initial-results-from-the-new-horizons-exploration-of-2014-mu69-a-small-kuiper-belt-object"},"modified":"2019-05-19T06:42:38","modified_gmt":"2019-05-19T13:42:38","slug":"initial-results-from-the-new-horizons-exploration-of-2014-mu69-a-small-kuiper-belt-object","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/05\/initial-results-from-the-new-horizons-exploration-of-2014-mu69-a-small-kuiper-belt-object","title":{"rendered":"Initial results from the New Horizons exploration of 2014 MU69, a small Kuiper Belt object"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/initial-results-from-the-new-horizons-exploration-of-2014-mu69-a-small-kuiper-belt-object3.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>After flying past Pluto in 2015, the New Horizons spacecraft shifted course to encounter (486958) 2014 MU<sub>69<\/sub>, a much smaller body about 30 kilometers in diameter. MU<sub>69<\/sub> is part of the Kuiper Belt, a collection of small icy bodies orbiting in the outer Solar System. Stern <em><i>et al.<\/i><\/em> present the initial results from the New Horizons flyby of MU<sub>69<\/sub> on 1 January 2019. MU<sub>69<\/sub> consists of two lobes that appear to have merged at low speed, producing a contact binary. This type of Kuiper Belt object is mostly undisturbed since the formation of the Solar System and so will preserve clues about that process.<\/p>\n<p><em><i>Science<\/i><\/em>, this issue p. <a href=\"https:\/\/science.sciencemag.org\/lookup\/doi\/10.1126\/science.aaw9771\">eaaw9771<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/science.sciencemag.org\/content\/364\/6441\/eaaw9771\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><\/p>\n<div style=\"clear:both;\">Read more<\/div>\n<p><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After flying past Pluto in 2015, the New Horizons spacecraft shifted course to encounter (486958) 2014 MU69, a much smaller body about 30 kilometers in diameter. MU69 is part of the Kuiper Belt, a collection of small icy bodies orbiting in the outer Solar System. Stern et al. present the initial results from the New [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":466,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-90957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/466"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90957\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}