With Pluto in the rearview mirror for a few weeks, the New Horizons spacecraft has been in need of a new target, which NASA has now revealed publicly.
According to BBC News, NASA selected a Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) called 2014 MU69. NASA has yet to give the target the final approval, but it is seen as possibly being similar in composition to Pluto.
New Horizons came to within 12,500km of Pluto about a month ago and was able to deliver images of the dwarf planet as well as its moons.
"Even as the New Horizon's spacecraft speeds away from Pluto out into the Kuiper Belt, and the data from the exciting encounter with this new world is being streamed back to Earth, we are looking outward to the next destination for this intrepid explorer," John Grunsfeld, an astronaut and chief of the NASA Science Mission Directorate at the agency headquarters, said in a press release. "While discussions whether to approve this extended mission will take place in the larger context of the planetary science portfolio, we expect it to be much less expensive than the prime mission while still providing new and exciting science."
Mission managers need to submit a formal request to visit 2014 MU69 by 2016. If approved, the spacecraft will execute maneuvers in Oct. and Nov. to put itself on track to arrive at the KBO on New Year's Day 2019.
"2014 MU69 is a great choice because it is just the kind of ancient KBO, formed where it orbits now, that the Decadal Survey desired us to fly by," New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colo., said in the release. "Moreover, this KBO costs less fuel to reach [than other candidate targets], leaving more fuel for the flyby, for ancillary science, and greater fuel reserves to protect against the unforeseen."
