NASA has recently published a set of images taken by the New horizon probe in which a completely unusual asteroid can be seen.
This is Arrokoth, a rock whose surface found a series of rocks quite different from those known by astronomers so far.
Beyond the eighth planet of the Solar System, Neptune, is the Kuiper Belt, an area of the cosmos where a large number of icy rocks inhabit, and also being an important source of comets.
NASA and strange asteroid
The New Horizon probe achieved unmatched shots of the asteroid Arrokoth, whose surface turned out to be very different from how it was thought.
In the words of John Spencer, author of the research and member of the Southwest Research Institute, Boulder Office, of Colorado “For me, the most surprising thing about this asteroid is that it teaches us the simplicity of the planetary formation process, product of shocks at very low speed after a collapse of the local cloud (…) I expected something more ambiguous: I’m happy to be wrong. “
Before New Horizon reached the asteroid, astronomers thought that the smallest Trans-Neptunians, that is, those objects located beyond the eighth planet of the Solar System were totally eroded by crashes.
Thanks to this discovery it is possible to postulate that, these asteroids have not changed significantly since the formation of the Solar System and that most of the features on their surface are due to formation processes and low-speed shocks of great importance in their creation
In this international research, the astronomer of the University of Chile, César Fuentes participated and his work in this study goes back to the search for Arrokoth from observatories in northern Chile and then determined the problems of changing the destination and orbit of the probe to reach its new destination.
Finally, in the words of sources “This discovery makes us rethink the history of the protoplanetary disk and the way in which the water reached Earth after its formation.”