OT: Countdown to Pluto (7 days)

kyoto kid

...interesting.

New Horizons isn't quite done either as it is heading for a close in rendezvous with In the Kyper belt with KBO object 2014 MU69 which will be the furthest planetary encounter in history.  It is set to pass by the odd shaped object (which may be two separate ones in extreme close proximity to each other) about three times closer than it did to Pluto (about 2,175 miles).  

agent unawares

kyoto kid said:

...interesting.

New Horizons isn't quite done either as it is heading for a close in rendezvous with In the Kyper belt with KBO object 2014 MU69 which will be the furthest planetary encounter in history.  It is set to pass by the odd shaped object (which may be two separate ones in extreme close proximity to each other) about three times closer than it did to Pluto (about 2,175 miles).  

NICE

This one I am even more excited for than Pluto.

SpottedKitty

kyoto kid said:

It is set to pass by the odd shaped object (which may be two separate ones in extreme close proximity to each other)

I've seen two "artist's guesstimate" pictures, I think on the New Horizons website; one is long and skinny, like the asteroid Eros (visited by the NEAR Shoemaker probe nearly 20 years ago), the other is sort of like a blobby rubber duck, like comet 67P (visited more recently by the Rosetta probe). It's small enough that it might be a contact binary, with two big chunks touching, but with not quite enough gravity to crush them together. There's a possibility this might be common in the larger KBOs, with interesting implications for the next few thousand examples we find way out there beyond Neptune.