Lifeboat Foundation

After flying past Pluto in 2015, the New Horizons spacecraft shifted course to encounter (486958) 2014 MU₆₉, a much smaller body about 30 kilometers in diameter. MU₆₉ is part of the Kuiper Belt, a collection of small icy bodies orbiting in the outer Solar System. Stern et al. present the initial results from the New Horizons flyby of MU₆₉ on 1 January 2019. MU₆₉ consists of two lobes that appear to have merged at low speed, producing a contact binary. This type of Kuiper Belt object is mostly undisturbed since the formation of the Solar System and so will preserve clues about that process.

Science, this issue p. eaaw9771.