The Explorations of New Horizons #SpaceSaturday

The images above is of the Kuiper Belt Object Arrokoth, taken by New Horizons in January 2019, one of the many great images taken by the spacecraft during its journey through the solar system. Here’s more from Centauri Dreams:

The ongoing analysis of what New Horizons found at Pluto/Charon is a reminder that no mission slams to a halt when one or another task is completed. For one thing, it takes a long time to get data back from New Horizons, and we learn from Stern’s report that a good deal of the flyby data from Arrokoth is still on the spacecraft’s digital recorders, remaining there because of higher-priority transmission needs as well as scheduling issues with the Deep Space Network. We can expect the flow of publications to continue. 49 new scientific papers came out this year alone.

That Arrokoth image above is still a stunner, and the inevitable naming process has begun not only here but on Pluto as well. The KBO’s largest crater has been christened ‘Sky,’ while Ride Rupes (for astronaut Sally Ride) and Coleman Mons (for early aviator Bessie Coleman) likewise will begin to appear on our maps of Pluto. All three names have been approved by the International Astronomical Union. ‘Rupes’ is the Latin word for ‘cliff,’ and here refers to an enormous feature near the southern tip of Pluto’s Tombaugh Regio. Ride Rupes is between 2 and 3 kilometers high and about 250 kilometers long, while Coleman Mons is a mountain, evidently recently created and thus distinctive in a region of older volcanic domes.

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