New Horizons’ next target may have a Moon, says NASA

The next flyby target of NASA’s New Horizons’ mission, which is a peanut-shaped object a billion miles past Pluto, might have company in the form of a small moon, astronomers say. The latest theory on the object named 2014 MU69 comes as New Horizons team continues to analyse telescope data on the target of a New Year’s Day 2019 flyby, NASA said. “We really won’t know what MU69 looks like until we fly past it, or even gain a full understanding of it until after the encounter,” said New Horizons science team member Marc Buie, of the Southwest Research Institute in the US.

But even from afar, the more we examine it, the more interesting and amazing this little world becomes,” said Buie. The data that led to these hints at MU69’s nature were gathered over six weeks in June and July, when the team made three attempts to place telescopes in the narrow shadow of MU69 as it passed in front of a star, NASA said.

The most valuable recon came on July 17, when five telescopes deployed in Argentina were in the right place at the right time to catch this fleeting shadow – an event known as an occultation …read more