Arrokoth

solar system · space exploration · kuiper belt

Visited by New Horizons. On January 1, 2019, the NASA spacecraft New Horizons zoomed past Arrokoth and became the first to ever visit this distant world, making it the farthest object in our solar system that humans have ever reached.

Icy Kuiper belt object. Arrokoth is a small, frozen chunk of rock and ice that orbits the Sun far beyond Neptune and even beyond Pluto in a region called the Kuiper belt.

Found by astronomers. Scientists discovered Arrokoth on June 26, 2014, using the famous Hubble Space Telescope while searching for interesting objects that the New Horizons spacecraft could visit.

Ancient solar system relic. Arrokoth has been orbiting the Sun since the earliest days of our solar system, so studying it helps scientists understand how planets and space objects formed billions of years ago.