Large mound structures on Kuiper belt object Arrokoth may have common origin

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SwRI study suggests large mound structures on Kuiper belt object Arrokoth may have common origin

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A new study led by Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) Planetary Scientist and Associate Vice President Dr. Alan Stern posits that the large, approximately 5-kilometer-long mounds that dominate the appearance of the larger lobe of the pristine Kuiper Belt object Arrokoth are similar enough to suggest a common origin. The SwRI study suggests that these “building blocks” could guide further work on planetesimal formational models. Stern presented these findings this week at the American Astronomical Society’s 55th Annual Division for Planetary Sciences (DPS) meeting in San Antonio. These results are now also published in the peer-reviewed Planetary Science Journal.

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft made a close flyby of Arrokoth in 2019. From those data, Stern and his coauthors identified 12 mounds on Arrokoth’s larger lobe, Wenu, which are almost the same shape, size, color and reflectivity. They also tentatively identified three more mounds on the object’s smaller lobe, Weeyo.

Read More: Southwest Research Institute

 

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