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Watch the History of our Solar System Fly By with MU69 – Presented by Science@NASA 

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Scientists have unlocked clues about the earliest forms of life on Earth

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by studying fossils found across our planet.

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In similar fashion, we’re now learning more about the earliest formation of our solar system from a different kind of fossil,

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a Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) known as 2014 MU69.

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Travel back in time to the solar system’s very beginning.

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There, two objects were formed that eventually came together in a body resembling a flattened bowling pin.

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When looking at the object from the vicinity of the Earth, which is 4 billion miles (6.4 billion km) away,

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MU69 looked like a point of light, even when using the powerful Hubble Space Telescope.

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But thanks to the New Horizons spacecraft, this is what it looked like on New Year’s Day, 2019,

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from approximately 4,100 miles (6,600 km) away, about 7 minutes before the spacecraft’s closest approach.

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New Horizons is a grand piano-sized spacecraft that was launched back in 2006,

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with the undertaking of exploring the Kuiper Belt – that donut-shaped disc of space

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that begins just beyond the orbit of Neptune.

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Dwarf planet Pluto and its largest moon Charon reside in the Kuiper Belt, as do over 100,000 KBOs.

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MU69 was discovered by the New Horizons team,

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and was found to be located in the neighborhood of New Horizons’ trajectory

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when the spacecraft reached the Kuiper Belt in 2015. Its location led to its selection as a flyby target.

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New Horizons Project Scientist Hal Weaver, of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab,

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notes three wondrous impressions about this 22 mile (35 km) long primeval object.

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“First, this is the most primitive object ever encountered by a spacecraft.

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By that I mean the least changed since the time of the solar system’s formation.”

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“Second, the shape of MU69’s body is giving us new insights into how planets formed.

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Scientific hypotheses change as New Horizons delivers new data.

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Until we saw it up close, we didn’t know for sure if MU69 was a single object or two distinct pieces.

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Now we know it’s actually composed of two distinct pieces – a large, flat lobe and a smaller, rounder lobe,

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that have merged into one entity. This fusion gives us clues regarding the initial steps that were taken to form a planet.”

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“Third, the flyby showed MU69’s red color – redder even than Pluto,

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and we believe that this may come from organic material – the same material that may have contributed

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to the origin of life on Earth.“

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Fossils of once-living things on Earth convey vital clues about the past.

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In space, KBOs can also convey fossil-like clues – about 4.5 billion years’ worth of solar system history.

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Scientists are poring over the information they’ve received so far,

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and the data transmissions from the MU69 flyby will continue through the late summer of 2020.

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In the meantime, New Horizons is traveling farther into the Kuiper Belt at about 31,500 miles (51,000 km) per hour.

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The spacecraft is now observing additional KBOs and exploring the region’s concentration

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of charged particle radiation and dust within the Kuiper Belt.

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To discover more about our solar system’s earliest times, visit science.nasa.gov.