New images captured by the New Horizons spacecraft in November and just released by NASA show the closest images ever of a distant object from the Kuiper Belt, a region located beyond the orbit of Neptune, according to the US space agency.
The object, which CNET and Gizmodo report is officially known as 1994 JR1, appears as a tiny white projectile in the center of a short animation created using pictures taken by the spacecraft’s Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) during an hour-long span on November 2.
Reports indicate that 1994 JR1 is the closets picture ever captured of a Kuper Belt Object by a wide margin – a factor of at least 15, according to Gizmodo. The roughly 90 mile wide object is what researchers refer to as “an accidental quasi-satellite of Pluto,” meaning that it stays close to the dwarf planet but does not actually orbit it. Rather, it orbits around the sun.
At the time the images were captured, 1994 JR1 was 3.3 billion miles (5.3 billion km) from the sun and 170 million miles (280 million km) away from New Horizons, NASA officials said in a statement. The animation shows the object traveling along a background of millions of stars.
A taste of what an extended New Horizons mission has to offer
“Mission scientists plan to use images like these to study many more ancient Kuiper Belt objects from New Horizons if an extended mission is approved,” the US space agency added. Fresh off a trip to Pluto (and having just sent back the closest images ever of the dwarf planet’s surface), the spacecraft is currently on course for a flyby of another Kuiper Belt object.
New Horizons should pass by that object, 2014 MU69, on January 1, 2019. By studying objects that call the ring of icy rocks and primordial materials known as the Kuiper Belt home, scientists hope to find out what the conditions would have been like shortly after the formation of the solar system, when the very first planets began travelling around the sun, NASA explained.
According to the Daily Mail, 2014 MU60 is located approximately one billion miles (1.6 billion km) beyond Pluto and is believed to be 10 times larger and 1,000 times more massive than most comets. However, the object, which was selected as a potential target back in August, is less than one percent the size and 1/10,000th the mass of Pluto itself.
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Feature Image: Thinkstock
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