First profile of Ultima Thule 21/05/2019 – Posted in: Daily News – Tags: ,

FIRST PROFILE OF ULTIMA THULE

 

Preliminary: What is Ultima Thule
Mains: NASA’s findings

 

News Flash

NASA has found evidence for a unique mixture of methanol, water ice, and organic molecules on Ultima Thule’s surface–the farthest world ever explored by mankind.

Analysing just the first sets of data gathered during the New Horizons spacecraft’s New Year’s 2019 flyby of the Kuiper Belt object 2014 MU69– Ultime Thule unveil much about the object’s development, geology and composition.

Researchers are also investigating a range of surface features on Ultima Thule, such as bright spots and patches, hills and troughs, and craters and pits on Ultima Thule.

 

Ultima Thule – An ancient relic from the era of planet formation–revealing details about the complex space object.

 

Highlight

  • The team found evidence for methanol, water ice, and organic molecules on Ultima Thule’s surface–a mixture very different from most icy objects explored previously by spacecraft.
  • The discoveries made about Ultima Thule are going to advance theories of solar system formation

 

What

  • The largest depression is an eight-kilometer-wide feature the team has nicknamed Maryland crater–which likely formed from an impact.
  • Some smaller pits on the Kuiper Belt object, may have been created by material falling into underground spaces, or due to exotic ices going from a solid to a gas and leaving pits in its place.
  • In colour and composition, Ultima Thule resembles many other objects found in its area of the Kuiper Belt.

 

Ultima Thule is a contact binary, with two distinctly differently shaped lobes.

At about 36 kilometers long, Ultima Thule consists of a large, strangely flat lobe–nicknamed “Ultima”–connected to a smaller, somewhat rounder lobe–dubbed “Thule”–at a juncture.

How the two lobes got their unusual shape is an unanticipated mystery that likely relates to how they formed billions of years ago.

The lobes likely once orbited each other until some process brought them together in what scientists have shown to be a “gentle” merger.

 

Source: Firstpost

 

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