Flagstaff astronomer prepares New Horizons to look beyond Pluto

In the outer reaches of our solar system, NASA’s New Horizons space probe is currently sailing away from Earth at an average velocity of 36,373 mph. It has already completed its primary objective, sending back detailed images of Pluto and its moon Charon during its historic 2015 flyby.

The probe is now set to explore other objects in the Kuiper Belt. This belt covers a vast region of space beyond Neptune and is home to millions of icy bodies left over from the formation of the planets.

NASA has announced that the probe’s next target will be 2014 MU69, a mysterious, irregularly shaped celestial body about 16 miles long and a billion miles away from Pluto. The nametag stems from it being first observed by the Hubble telescope in the year 2014. If the mission is successful, MU69 will be the farthest object ever visited by a spacecraft.

Will Grundy is a key member of the New Horizons project. He is the leader of the surface composition theme team, based out of the Lowell Observatory here in Flagstaff. He hopes that a close-up view of MU69 will provide scientists with clues as to how the solar system came to exist today, particularly the planets that share the same chemical compounds as the object.

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