What Was Found on The Most Distant Object Ever Explored By a Spacecraft?

have you ever imagined yourself as a brilliant detective who solves the mystery with one small clue such as a button from the crime scene it must be how astrophysicists feel piecing together the history of the solar system in their hands was a tiny piece of evidence data obtained from an ancient object with a diameter of only about 36 kilometers or 22.4 miles and despite the fact that it's located 44 times farther from the Sun that our planet Earthlings managed to reach it with their exploration devices so how did a space probe end up in the distant Kuiper belt and why are the mysteries of an asteroid which resembles a bloody snowman no less intriguing than the Norwegian detective novels of Jo Nesbo it all started with Voyager New Horizons launched in January 2006 in July 2015 it made the first orbit of Pluto in history having reached the main goal of the mission the space probe went even further the new horizons team turned its attention to Ultima Thule or 2014 mu 69 a small object in the Kuiper belt which is located at a distance of nearly 6.5 billion kilometers or 4 billion miles from Earth and 1.6 billion kilometres of 1 billion miles further than Pluto NASA only learned about the existence of the asteroid in 2014 when it was discovered by the Hubble telescope soon it was decided to conduct the first study of such a small object in what would be the farthest observation of a planetary body in the history of space flight and that means setting new space records the head of mission Allen Stern then admitted that NASA had never sent a research probe to an object about which so little was known having declared such an M vicious Goel Earthlings actually took a wild guess and one later once scientists became more familiar with the asteroid it was named Eric Hoth which means sky in language of the Powhatan Indians to replace the old unofficial name of Ultima Thule meaning the extreme limit the historical event occurred on January 1st 2019 the device passed at a distance of about 3,500 kilometers or 2,175 miles from the asteroid just imagine the images you see were taken farther away than any ever transmitted to the earth scientists and all mankind have opened a completely new unknown page in the book about the solar system in reality all the distant objects in the Kuiper belt are historical relics that keep prints of the past almost unchanged as Allen Stern the director of the New Horizons mission said we've never seen anything so primitive that remains nearly unchanged first of all the appearance of this cosmic body is striking it looks like a snowman moreover a red snowman the asteroid is a contact binary object measuring approximately 36 by 18 by 10 kilometers or 22.4 by 11.2 by 6.2 miles both parts of it are almost identical in color the hue of their ice surface is probably due to the influence of cosmic radiation similar effects are responsible for most of the reddish hue on Pluto's surface as well as for the northern part of its satellite Charon both halves of the asteroid were once separate freely flying objects their union must have occurred shortly after the birth of the solar system and this moment is of the most interest to scientists since their merger was surprisingly gentle as if they converged at the speed of two spacecraft docking together these two ancestors formed from the same cloud of small particles of gas dust and ice billions of kilometers from the newborn son at first they revolved around a common center of mass gradually drawing closer together it ultimately came together very softly astronomers believe that the speed of the collision was so slow that a car in a collision at the same speed could barely crush the bumper somewhere around eight point nine kilometers or five and a half miles per hour what we could see in a computer simulation of a merger at such a speed is strikingly similar to what we observe in reality as more and more data came from the Voyager to earth there was yet another surprise Erica is an unusually flat object the two parts of the asteroid that were initially mistaken for spheres were not spheres at all but rather flattened petals the larger half of the asteroid is significantly wider and flatter than the smaller part one New Horizons researcher how a weaver a planetary scientist from Johns Hopkins University believes that this shape could have resulted from natural changes during its formation in a cloud of small particles accumulated around the core many objects in the Kuiper belt possess satellites but air cough seems to be flying alone if it had a moon this would help scientists determine the density of the asteroid all that the authors of the study can say so far is that it most likely resembles the nucleus of a comet the asteroid also didn't show any signs of an atmosphere that would protect it from lesions but there are almost no craters on the surface of the cosmic body a team of researchers has identified only two possible impact craters located on a small part of the binary object in a concave area called Maryland scientists believe that this indicates a shortage of small objects in the Kuiper belt Eric Hoff is also a very dark object it reflects no more than twelve percent of the light falling on its surface for comparison the Earth's soil reflects about ten percent of the light that hits it this makes it even more curious that there are bright prominent spots on the asteroid judging by the pictures they can be divided into three types round or oval spots straight or slightly curved stripes and wide scattered areas the brightest spots are on the isthmus of the object the junction of both lobes and in Maryland their exact nature remains to be explored another strange feature of air cough remains a mystery the intensity of its glow doesn't change as it rotates astronomers have made several assumptions about the causes of this for example that the asteroid is facing the probe only with its poles so that it's surrounded by a hypothetical gas mantle but none of these theories have been confirmed scientists will probably be able to answer these questions in September of 2020 it's expected that by that time the probe will transmit all three gigabytes of data it collected about air cough to earth the fact is that now Voyager is located at a distance of more than 6.5 billion kilometers or four billion miles from Earth and the radio signal takes six hours and nine minutes to reach our planet considering that the device is capable of transmitting about 1,000 bits per second and the probe is constantly moving away from Earth it will take about 20 month to send all three gigabytes then scientists will be able to get up close with the most ancient mysteries of the solar system that have been preserved by the asteroid since air cough is about 44 times farther from the Sun than us it receives 900 times less sunlight than we do on earth it turns out that it never reaches the temperature above minus 212 degrees Celsius or minus three hundred and forty-nine point six degrees Fahrenheit which means that it was well preserved from the moment of its formation shortly after the birth of the solar system scientists believe that fluctuations in daily and seasonal temperatures only affected the very shallow surface layer of the asteroid from a few millimetres to several meters this is a kind of time capsule a deeply frozen ancient relic awaiting researchers to discover it it's likely out of objects similar to air cough that the planets of our solar system including the earth eventually formed since no small object of the Kuiper belt had been previously investigated by a spacecraft we obtained very unique information about the geology and composition of such a body according to Alan Stern Eric Hoff presented us with many puzzles even more than Pluto given the difference in size but this is far from the finale the probes radio isotope generators of heat and energy will operate at least until the mid 2030s this is enough not only to study the Kuiper belt in detail but also to go beyond it the next task of New Horizons may be accomplished in 2021 and this will be a new record of research range what do you think about this does humanity have its own extreme limit of space flights or is it all just a our efforts let us know in the comments subscribe to our channel and click on the bell to receive timely notifications of new and interesting videos until next time [Music]

Channel: Ridddle

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Keywords: Ridddle, riddle, what if, what, if, what would happened, What Happens If, sci, science, smart, experiment, Most Distant Object, space object, spacecraft, strange, space, universe, astronomy

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Length: 10min 40sec (640 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 06 2020