The Cold Classical Kuiper Belt, a class of small bodies in undisturbed orbits beyond Neptune, is composed of primitive objects preserving information about Solar System formation. In January 2019, the New Horizons spacecraft flew past one of these objects, the 36-kilometer-long contact binary (486958) Arrokoth (provisional designation 2014 MU69). Images from the flyby show that Arrokoth has no detectable rings, and no satellites (larger than 180 meters in diameter) within a radius of 8000 kilometers. Arrokoth has a lightly cratered, smooth surface with complex geological features, unlike those on previously visited Solar System bodies. The density of impact craters indicates the surface dates from the formation of the Solar System. The two lobes of the contact binary have closely aligned poles and equators, constraining their accretion mechanism.

The Kuiper Belt is a distant region of the outer Solar System. On 1 January 2019, the New Horizons spacecraft flew close to (486958) 2014 MU69, a cold classical Kuiper Belt object approximately 30 kilometers in diameter. Such objects have never been substantially heated by the Sun and are therefore well preserved since their formation. We describe initial results from these encounter observations. MU69 is a bilobed contact binary with a flattened shape, discrete geological units, and noticeable albedo heterogeneity. However, there is little surface color or compositional heterogeneity. No evidence for satellites, rings or other dust structures, a gas coma, or solar wind interactions was detected. MU69’s origin appears consistent with pebble cloud collapse followed by a low-velocity merger of its two lobes.

The New Horizons spacecraft's encounter with the cold classical Kuiper belt object (486958) Arrokoth (formerly 2014 MU69) revealed a contact-binary planetesimal. We investigate how it formed, finding it is the product of a gentle, low-speed merger in the early Solar System.Its two lenticular lobes suggest low-velocity accumulation of numerous smaller planetesimals within a gravitationally collapsing, solid particle cloud. The geometric alignment of the lobes indicates the lobes were a co-orbiting binary that experienced angular momentum loss and subsequent merger, possibly due to dynamical friction and collisions within the cloud or later gas drag. Arrokoth's contact-binary shape was preserved by the benign dynamical and collisional environment of the cold classical Kuiper belt, and so informs the accretion processes that operated in the early Solar System.Main Text: Following its encounter with Pluto in 2015 (1), the New Horizons spacecraft continued further into the Kuiper belt (2). This included a flyby of (486958) Arrokoth (also informally known as Ultima Thule), discovered in a dedicated Hubble Space Telescope campaign (3). Arrokoth's orbit has a semimajor axis a⨀ = 44.2 astronomical units (au), Submitted Manuscript: Confidential 3 eccentricity e = 0.037, and inclination i = 2.54°, making it a member of the cold classical Kuiper belt (CCKB), a reservoir of mainly small bodies on dynamically cold orbits, i.e., those with lowto-moderate e and low i (typically i < 5°), in the outer Solar System (4). CCKB objects have a steeper size-frequency distribution, higher binary fraction, higher albedos, and redder optical colors than the dynamically hot and Neptune-resonant populations of the Kuiper belt, implying a distinct formation mechanism and/or evolutionary history (4). CCKB objects are thought to have formed in place and remained largely undisturbed by the migration of the Solar System's giant planets (4, 5, 6), making them unperturbed remnants of the original protoplanetary disk.The encounter showed Arrokoth is a bi-lobed object, consisting of two discrete, quasiellipsoidal lobes (equivalent spherical diameters 15.9 and 12.9 km, respectively) joined at a narrow contact area or "neck" (Fig. 1) (7,8). We interpret this geometric, co-joined object as a contact binary, i.e., two formerly separate objects that have gravitated towards each other until they touch. The larger lobe (hereafter LL) is more oblate than the smaller lobe (hereafter SL) (8).Arrokoth rotates with a 15.92-hr period at an obliquity of 99° (the angle between its rotation axis and heliocentric orbital plane). The short axes of both lobes are aligned to within a few degrees of each other and with the spin axis of the body as a whole (8). The average visible and nearinfrared colors of both lobes are indistinguishable (9). Near-infrared spectral absorptions on both lobes indicate the presence of methanol ice-a common, relatively thermally stable component (for an ice) of cometary bodies and extrasolar protoplanetary disks (10). The very red optical c...

Pluto's first known moon, Charon, was discovered in 1978 1 and has a diameter about half that of Pluto 2-4 , which makes it larger relative to its primary than any other moon in the Solar System. Previous searches for other satellites around Pluto have been unsuccessful 5-7 , but they were not sensitive to objects ∼ <150 km in diameter and there are no fundamental reasons why Pluto should not have more satellites 6 . Here we report the discovery of two additional moons around Pluto, provisionally designated S/2005 P1 (hereafter P1) and S/2005 P2 (hereafter P2), which makes Pluto the first Kuiper belt object (KBO) known to have multiple satellites. These new satellites are much smaller than Charon (diameter ∼1200 km), with P1 ranging in diameter from 60-165 km depending on the surface reflectivity, and P2 about 20% smaller than P1. Although definitive orbits cannot be derived, both new satellites appear to be moving in circular orbits in the same orbital plane as Charon, with orbital periods of ∼38 days (P1) and ∼25 days (P2). The implications of the discovery of P1 and P2 for the origin and evolution of the Pluto system, and for the satellite formation process in the Kuiper belt, are discussed in a companion paper 8 . We observed Pluto with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) using the Wide-Field Channel (WFC) mode of the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) on UT 2005 May 15 and May 18 (Fig. 1). The ACS/WFC consists of two 4096 × 2048 pixel CCDs (WFC1 and WFC2) butted together, effectively forming a single 4096 × 4096 pixel camera with a gap of ∼50 pixels between the two CCDs. The F606W ("Broad V") filter, which has a center wavelength of 591.8 nm and a width of 67.2 nm, was used for all images. At the time of the observations, Pluto was 31.0 astronomical units (AU) from the sun, 30.1 AU from the Earth, and had a solar phase angle of 0.96 deg on May 15 and 0.88 deg on May 18. Identical strategies were employed on each observing date. First, a single short exposure (0.5 s) was taken to enable accurate positions of Pluto and Charon to be measured on unsaturated images. Then, two identical, long exposures (475 s) were taken at the same pointing to provide high sensitivity to faint objects. Finally, the telescope was moved by ∼5 pixels in one dimension and ∼60 pixels in the other dimension, and two identical, long exposures (475 s) were taken to provide data in the region of the sky falling in the inter-chip gap during the first two long exposures. The telescope was programmed to track the apparent motion of Pluto (∼3 arcsec hr −1 ) for all exposures. The two new satellites are detected with high signal-to-noise ratio (S/N ≥ 35) and have a spatial morphology consistent with the ACS point spread function (PSF; this is the spatial brightness

The LOng-Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) is the high resolution imaging instrument for the New Horizons mission to Pluto, its giant satellite Charon, its small moons Nix and Hydra, and the Kuiper Belt, which is the vast region of icy bodies extending roughly from Neptune's orbit out to 50 astronomical units (AU). New Horizons launched on January 19, 2006 as the inaugural mission in NASA's New Frontiers program. LORRI is a narrow angle (field of view=0.29°), high resolution (4.95 μrad pixels), Ritchey-Chrétien telescope with a 20.8 cm diameter primary mirror, a focal length of 263 cm, and a three lens field-flattening assembly. A 1024 × 1024 pixel (optically active region), thinned, backside-illuminated charge-coupled device (CCD) detector is used in the focal plane unit and is operated in frame transfer mode. LORRI provides panchromatic imaging over a bandpass that extends approximately from 350 nm to 850 nm. LORRI operates in an extreme thermal environment, situated inside the warm spacecraft with a large, open aperture viewing cold space. LORRI has a silicon carbide optical system, designed to maintain focus over the operating temperature range without a focus adjustment mechanism. Moreover, the spacecraft is thruster-stabilized without reaction wheels, placing stringent limits on the available exposure time and the optical throughput needed to satisfy the measurement requirements.

Some active asteroids have been proposed to be formed as a result of impact events1. Because active asteroids are generally discovered by chance only after their tails have fully formed, the process of how impact ejecta evolve into a tail has, to our knowledge, not been directly observed. The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission of NASA2, in addition to having successfully changed the orbital period of Dimorphos3, demonstrated the activation process of an asteroid resulting from an impact under precisely known conditions. Here we report the observations of the DART impact ejecta with the Hubble Space Telescope from impact time T + 15 min to T + 18.5 days at spatial resolutions of around 2.1 km per pixel. Our observations reveal the complex evolution of the ejecta, which are first dominated by the gravitational interaction between the Didymos binary system and the ejected dust and subsequently by solar radiation pressure. The lowest-speed ejecta dispersed through a sustained tail that had a consistent morphology with previously observed asteroid tails thought to be produced by an impact4,5. The evolution of the ejecta after the controlled impact experiment of DART thus provides a framework for understanding the fundamental mechanisms that act on asteroids disrupted by a natural impact1,6.

We report on g, r and i band observations of the Interstellar Object 1I/'Oumuamua (1I) taken on 2017 October 29 from 04:28 to 08:40 UTC by the Apache Point Observatory (APO) 3.5m telescope's ARCTIC camera. We find that 1I's colors are g − r = 0.41 ± 0.24 and r − i = 0.23 ± 0.25, consistent with visible spectra (Masiero 2017; Ye et al. 2017;Fitzsimmons et al. 2017) and most comparable to the population of Solar System C/D asteroids, Trojans, or comets. We find no evidence of any cometary activity at a heliocentric distance of 1.46 au, approximately 1.5 months after 1I's closest approach distance to the Sun. Significant brightness variability was seen in the r observations, with the object becoming notably brighter towards the end of the run. By combining our APO photometric time series data with the Discovery Channel Telescope (DCT) data of Knight et al. (2017), taken 20 h later on 2017 October 30, we construct an almost complete lightcurve with a most probable single-peaked lightcurve period of P 4 h. Our results imply a double peaked rotation period of 8.1 ± 0.02 h, with a peak-to-trough amplitude of 1.5 -2.1 mags. Assuming that 1I's shape can be approximated by an ellipsoid, the amplitude constraint implies that 1I has an axial ratio of 3.5 to 10.3, which is strikingly elongated. Assuming that 1I is rotating above its critical break up limit, our results are compatible with 1I having modest cohesive strength and may have obtained its elongated shape during a tidal distortion event before being ejected from its home system.

The outer Solar System object (486958) Arrokoth (provisional designation 2014 MU 69 ) has been largely undisturbed since its formation. We study its surface composition using data collected by the New Horizons spacecraft. Methanol ice is present along with organic material, which may have formed through radiation of simple molecules. Water ice was not detected. This composition indicates hydrogenation of carbon monoxide-rich ice and/ or energetic processing of methane condensed on water ice grains in the cold, outer edge of the early Solar System. There are only small regional variations in color and spectra across the surface, suggesting Arrokoth formed from a homogeneous or well-mixed reservoir of solids. Microwave thermal emission from the winter night side is consistent with a mean brightness temperature of 29 ± 5 K.The New Horizons spacecraft flew past (486958) Arrokoth at the beginning of 2019 (1). Arrokoth rotates with a 15.9 hour period about a spin axis inclined 99.3° to the pole of its 298 year orbit at a mean distance from the Sun of 44.2 AU (2, 3). Its near-circular orbit, with a mean eccentricity of 0.03 and inclination of 2.4° to the plane of the Solar System, makes it a Kuiper belt object (KBO) and more specifically, a member of the "kernel" sub-population of the cold classical KBOs (CCKBOs) (4). CCKBOs have distinct origins and properties from KBOs on more excited orbits, which are thought to have formed closer to the Sun before being perturbed outward by migrating giant planets early in Solar System history (5). CCKBOs still orbit where they formed in the protoplanetary nebula, the accretion disk of gas and dust around the young Sun. They have a high fraction of binary objects (6), a uniformly red color distribution (7, 8), a size-frequency distribution deficient of large objects (9, 10), and higher albedos (11,12). These properties arise from the environment at the outermost edge of the protoplanetary nebula, from a distinct history of subsequent evolution of CCKBOs compared to other KBOs, or of some combination of these two. Arrokoth provides a record of the process of forming planetesimals, the first generation of gravitationally bound bodies, that has been minimally altered by subsequent processes such as heating and impactor bombardment (3). Its distinctive bi-lobed, 35 km-long shape with few impact craters favors formation via rapid gravitational collapse, rather than scenarios involving more gradual accretion via piece-wise agglomeration of dust particles to assemble incrementally larger aggregates (13). We study Arrokoth's color, composition, and thermal environment using data from the New Horizons flyby, and discuss the resulting implications for its formation and subsequent evolution.