New Horizon is all set up to make another flyby of a KBO called 2014 MU69, which lies more than 1 billion miles beyond Pluto.
A artist Viewpoint!
The probe will study 2014 MU69 up
close in January 2019, if NASA approves an extended mission.They had to
set the flyby up before asking for funding.The New Horizons team plans
to submit a mission-extension application to NASA early next year. If
the agency gives the go-ahead, New Horizons will zoom by 2014 MU69 on
Jan. 1, 2019, coming even closer to that body than the probe got to
Pluto (7,750 miles,) this past July 14. Both objects lie in the Kuiper
Belt, the ring of icy bodies beyond Neptune's orbit.
New Horizons is
healthy and now on course to make the first exploration of a building
block of small planets like Pluto, and we're excited to propose its
exploration to NASA,"
New Horizons is currently about 3.2 billion
miles (5.1 billion km) from Earth and 895 million miles (1.44 billion
km) from 2014 MU69, NASA officials said. The spacecraft continues to
beam home data from the Pluto flyby. All of this information should be
on the ground by next September or so, mission team members have said.
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