Extended Kuiper Belt?

Produced by the Space Telescope Science Institute’s Office of Public Outreach in collaboration with NASA’s Universe of Learning partners: Caltech/IPAC, Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, and NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Video imagery:

·       New Horizons Arrokoth flyby animations: NASA, The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory

·       Solar System illustration with Kuiper Belt: NASA

·       Artist’s concept of New Horizons in the Kuiper Belt: NASA, The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory 

 
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Images of colorful planets in space. Text, News from the Universe. March 1, 2024. Extended Kuiper Belt? White objects float in black space. 

 

Text, NASA's New Horizons mission is living up to it name. Its latest findings suggest the solar system's Kuiper Belt may extend much further than previously thought. 

 

A ring of speckled stars surrounds orbit tracks for Pluto, Neptune, and Uranus. It's labeled Kuiper Belt. 

 

The new evidence suggests the outer edge of the Kuiper belt could extend billions of miles farther than current estimates or that there could even be a second belt beyond the one we already know. The Kuiper Belt dust is being measured by an instrument aboard New Horizons that was designed and built by students at the University of Colorado Boulder. Currently, New Horizons is the only spacecraft doing science in the Kuiper Belt, and is expected to continue exploring the region, however far it may extend, through the 2040s. 

 

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This news was brought to you in part by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.