NASA collects first data on a post-Pluto object

New Horizons has broken a lot of ground in the outer reaches of the solar system by studying Pluto and its moons, but now it has gone a step beyond by studying 1994 JR1—the first post-Pluto Kuiper Belt object (KBO) it has observed.

According to NASA, looking at 1994 JR1 is something like a warmup for New Horizons’ hopeful future—its team is awaiting approval to extend the spacecraft’s mission in order to fly by another KBO, titled 2014 MU69, in 2019. During this mission, it will hopefully be able to grab close-ups of some potential 19 other KBOs as well.

New Horizons has completed two observations of 1994 JR1, a 90-mile-wide object that orbits more than 3 billion miles (5 billion km) from the Sun. The observations were performed on April 7-8 using New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI), and at an extraordinarily close distance (relatively speaking)—it was only 69 million miles (111 million km) away from 1994 JR1. This smashes the previous record for this particular object, which was completed in November of 2015 from a distance of 170 million miles (280 million km) away.

Making new discoveries

And already, they’re made some exciting discoveries about 1994 JR1.

“Combining the November 2015 and April 2016 observations allows us to pinpoint the location of JR1 to within 1,000 kilometers (about 600 miles), far better than any small KBO,” said Simon Porter, a New Horizons science team member from Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado, according to NASA.

This new knowledge means that scientists can rule out a previous theory about the KBO—namely, that it was a quasi-satellite of Pluto. Further, the newest observation has led to scientists identifying 1994 JR1’s rotation period (how long it takes to complete one revolution, or a day for the object). By analyzing the changes in light that was reflected off its surface, they were able to gather that it makes a full rotation every 5.4 hours.

“That’s relatively fast for a KBO,” said science team member John Spencer, also from SwRI. “This is all part of the excitement of exploring new places and seeing things never seen before.”

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Image credit: NASA

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Image credit: NASA

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