2019/01/08 by S. A. Stern, Stern, S. A., J. R. Spencer +24 · 1 voice · 1 citation
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Environmental Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Astro and Planetary Science #Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP) #FOS: Physical sciences #Geomagnetism and Paleomagnetism Studies #Isotope Analysis in Ecology #Planetary Science and Exploration #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1901.02578
openalex publication_date 2019/01/08 · openalex created_date 2019/11/22 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The centerpiece objective of the NASA New Horizons first Kuiper Extended\nMission (KEM-1) was the close flyby of the Kuiper Belt Object KBO) 2014 MU69,\nnicknamed Ultima Thule. On 1 Jan 2019 this flyby culminated, making the first\nclose observations of a small KBO. Initial post flyby trajectory reconstruction\nindicated the spacecraft approached to within ~3500 km of MU69 at 5:33:19 UT.\nHere we summarize the earliest results obtained from that successful flyby. At\nthe time of this submission, only 4 days of data down-link from the flyby were\navailable; well over an order of magnitude more data will be down-linked by the\ntime of this Lunar and Planetary Science Conference presentation in 2019 March.\nTherefore many additional results not available at the time of this abstract\nsubmission will be presented in this review talk.\n