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Ultima Thule
May 21 , 2019
2016 days
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- NASA has found evidence of a unique mixture of water ice, methanol, and organic molecules on Ultima Thule’s surface.
- This mixture is very different from most icy objects explored previously by spacecraft till date.
- Ultima Thule is a Greco-Latin term which means a distant unknown world.
- Its scientific name is 2014 MU 69.
- It was discovered in 2014 by Marc Buie using Hubble Space Telescope as a part of the ongoing New Horizons Mission.
- It is a trans Neptunian object located in Kuiper belt.
- The New Horizon Mission was launched in 2006 to search for Kuiper Belt objects.
Kuiper Belt
- Kuiper belt is a circumstellar disc in outer Solar System.
- It is approximately 6.4 billion km from Earth.
- It is the farthest world ever explored by mankind.
- The Kuiper belt is home to three officially recognized dwarf planets
- Pluto
- Haumea
- Makemake
- Originally considered a planet, Pluto's status as part of the Kuiper belt caused it to be reclassified as a dwarf planet in 2006.
- The objects within the Kuiper belt are referred to as trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs).
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