NASA and the New Horizons team are asking the public for help in giving the Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) “(486958) 2014 MU69” a nickname.
On Jan 1, 2019, the New Horizons spacecraft, which made a spectacular flyby of Pluto in 2015, will swing by this small, frozen asteroid in the Kuiper Belt, at the outer edge of our solar system.
Visit www.frontierworlds.org to provide your imaginative suggestions and have a chance to become famous. Or just show your preference for the current names under consideration -
- Año Nuevo ("New Year" in Spanish)
- Camalor (fictional city in the Kuiper Belt)
- Chomolungma, Sagarmatha (Mt. Everest in Tibet and Nepal)
- Huginn & Muninn (ravens/gatherers of knowledge for Odin)
- Kibo, Mawenzi, Shira (peaks of Mt. Kilimanjaro)
- Olaf (Norse name meaning relic, ancestral heritage)
- Pangu (from Chinese mythology, emerged from yin and yang)
- Patagonia (site of MU69 occultation; a cold, remote destination)
- Tangotango & Tawhaki (Maori creation goddess and her husband)
- Tiamat & Abzu (Babylonian water gods who created the cosmos)
- Uluru (Ayers Rock, largest rock on Earth, an "island mountain")
- Ultima Thule ("beyond the borders of the known world")
The list will change as time goes by. A few names that showed up earlier have been retired.
Some guidance from NASA —
It's a good idea to propose two or more names that go together. The reason is that we don't know how many bodies to name! Some observations suggest that MU69 might be a binary—two objects tied together by their mutual gravity. If the two bodies are touching, a "contact binary", then we will only need one name. However, if they are separated by empty space, we will need two names. Of course, there may be more bodies—perhaps small moons—orbiting out there as well.
Note that along with the suggested name(s), we have to provide some additional info on the nomination page at www.frontierworlds.org/… -
- Why do you recommend these names?
- Please provide a link to a web page where we can find more information about these names
The campaign will close at 3 p.m. EST on Dec. 1. NASA and the New Horizons team will announce the selection in early January.
So, let’s send in our suggestions and let’s get our young ones involved.
MU69
(486958) 2014 MU69 is a classical Kuiper belt object. The small 30 km wide asteroid orbits approximately 6.5 billion km around the Sun, with a period of 295 years.
On 26 June 2014, 2014 MU69 was discovered using the Hubble Space Telescope during a preliminary survey to find a suitable Kuiper belt object for the New Horizons probe to fly by. In June and July 2017, 2014 MU69 occulted three background stars. Observations from around the world enabled more precise measurements of its critical parameters; initial results from the occultation showed that MU69 has a very irregular shape; subsequent analysis showed that the asteroid has two "lobes", with diameters of 20 km and 18 km, respectively. The separation between the two lobes is not known.
Flight Plan for the New Horizons Spacecraft
MU69 was selected as the next destination for the New Horizons mission in Aug 2015, after its historic July 14, 2015 flyby of the Pluto system. www.nasa.gov/…
MU69 has favorable characteristics and is reachable given the limited fuel on-board the New Horizons spacecraft. The spacecraft has to travel an additional 1.6 billion km beyond Pluto.
New Horizons will fly closer to MU69 than Pluto - 3,500 km at closest approach, compared to the 12,500 km approach to Pluto. Using all seven on-board science instruments, New Horizons will obtain extensive geological, geophysical, compositional, and other data on MU69; it will also search for an atmosphere and moons. www.nasa.gov/...
The Kuiper Belt
The Kuiper belt is an area extending from the orbit of Neptune (at 30 AU) to approximately 50 AU from the Sun. It is similar to the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, but is far larger—20 times as wide and 20 to 200 times as massive. Like the asteroid belt, it consists mainly of small bodies, or remnants from the Solar System's formation. Most Kuiper belt objects are composed largely of frozen volatiles (termed "ices"), such as methane, ammonia and water. The total mass of all objects is estimated to range between 1/25 and 1/10 the mass of the Earth (not much), although some estimates are as high as 30 Earth masses.
The Largest Trans-Neptunian Objects and their Names
Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs) are objects that orbit the Sun at a greater average distance than Neptune. KBOs are a subset of TNOs.
A Previous Name Contest
The name of the target asteroid of the OSIRIS-Rex mission, Bennu was selected from more than eight thousand student entries from dozens of countries around the world who entered a "Name That Asteroid!" contest run by the University of Arizona, The Planetary Society, and the LINEAR Project. A third-grade student named Michael Puzio, from North Carolina, proposed the name in reference to the Egyptian mythological bird Bennu. To Puzio, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft with its extended TAGSAM arm resembles the Egyptian deity, which is typically depicted as a heron.
So, be warned that you will be competing with a lot of creative young students.
Another Catchy Name
The inter-stellar object that visited our solar system last month was originally named as A/2017 U1. On Nov 6, it was renamed as ʻOumuamua. The name is Hawaiian in origin (ʻou means reach out for, and mua, with the second mua placing emphasis, means first, in advance of), and reflects the nature of the object as a "scout" or "messenger" from the past. www.minorplanetcenter.net/…
That’s a winning name!
Remarks
Unlike asteroids, KBOs have been heated only slightly by the Sun, and are thought to represent a well preserved, deep-freeze sample of what the outer solar system was like following its birth 4.6 billion years ago. MU69 is thought to be like the building blocks of Kuiper Belt planets such as Pluto.
What exciting discoveries will MU69 reveal? We will have wait another year. Meanwhile, here is a fascinating video of Pluto, made using images taken by the New Horizons spacecraft in 2015 -
References
- MU69 Wiki — en.wikipedia.org/…
- New Horizons Spacecraft — en.wikipedia.org/…
- NASA article www.nasa.gov/…
- Name submission site — www.frontierworlds.org
- New Horizons KBO Mission page — pluto.jhuapl.edu/…
- Pluto - Planet or Dwarf Planet? — www.dailykos.com/…
- OSIRIS-REx - Asteroid Sampler — www.dailykos.com/…
- Asteroids and Planetary Defense — www.dailykos.com/...
So, let’s send in our suggestions and let’s get our young friends involved.
I suspect we will get a lot of clever suggestions right here by our esteemed kossacks!