NASA’s next mission: Getting a piece of ice about 45 kilometers in diameter – unocero

The New Horizons probe, which completed an amazing journey to reach Pluto in July, has a new target: a piece of ice , about 45 kms in diameter, known as MU69 2014, and which is at a distance of about one billion kilometers from Earth. Scientists have planned to visit some interesting objects in the Kuiper Belt, one of the thousands of rock and ice that orbit the Sun in a cloud beyond Neptune. NASA scientists announced that New Horizons 2014 MU69 selected instead of another candidate, another piece of ice called 2014 PN70.

The NASA must approve officially this side quest, but it appears that this will happen. If all goes as planned, the spacecraft reach its destination in January 2019. In fact, after his trip to Pluto, New Horizons will continue its journey to the 2014 MU69, labeled PT (Potential Target 1). Many think Pluto would be until the end of the solar system, but it is actually one of the largest objects in the Kuiper belt. NASA actually had planned to follow New Horizons its way to other objects and therefore, it was equipped with enough fuel for it. In addition, aided by the Hubble Space Telescope, NASA has been able to choose potential targets

Visit the Kuiper belt is important because little is known about the same as a whole and that the composition of the belt could provide clues to the exact make-up of the solar system. This belt was formed about 4.6 billion years ago, while other planets and the Earth itself. But for unknown reasons, the Earth continued to grow and Pluto, for example, stopped its growth, perhaps as many other objects in that belt.

This means that objects in this strip of space They could be frozen in time than would have been the solar system in its infancy capsules. We have studied some of the smaller (comets with extremely elliptical orbits that occasionally come close enough to Earth) and now one of the biggest, Pluto. Visit an object as 2014 MU69 could help connect the dots, says Alan Stern, principal investigator for the New Horizons mission.

To get to the object in question, rockets New Horizons will light in October to slightly alter its trajectory and put the ship on the right course. When you reach your goal, in 2019, take photos and collect all types of scientific data to be sent to Earth. After that, New Horizons will continue floating in space without a planned destination, until it reaches the limits of the solar system or exhaust their fuel, which could occur by 2030

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