What the New Horizons spacecraft from NASA encountered may suggest the presence of a hidden structure in the darkest, coldest regions of the Solar System.
According to previous theories, if the spacecraft travels far enough from the Sun, it will drift into a crowded area filled with countless icy objects. This area is known as the Kuiper Belt, a massive structure where the “dwarf planet” Pluto resides.
In recent years, this spacecraft has traversed that dense region and is now quite isolated. However, it has not escaped the Kuiper Belt as we once thought.
NASA spacecraft surprised while exploring the Kuiper Belt of the Solar System – (Graphic: ESO).
According to Science Alert, an international research team recently combined data from the New Horizons spacecraft and the Subaru telescope of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan located in Hawaii (USA) and realized that the Kuiper Belt may have up to two layers.
The Kuiper Belt extends from the orbit of Neptune, about 30 astronomical units (AU) from the Sun, which is the average distance between the Earth and the Sun.
At about 50 AU from the Sun, NASA’s spacecraft entered a more desolate area and has been nearly alone since about 55 AU.
As of the time of this writing, the spacecraft is approximately 60 AU away. However, additional observations from Subaru indicate that it will continue to be surrounded by numerous objects from 70-90 AU.
According to Dr. Wesley Fraser from the National Research Council of Canada, a member of the research team, our Kuiper Belt has long appeared very small compared to similar structures in many other planetary systems.
The new results indicate that it is not small at all; rather, we simply do not understand it yet.
The space where NASA’s spacecraft is drifting into is not the end of the belt, but merely a hidden structure that we have never known about. This space divides the belt into two, a phenomenon that has been observed in other star systems.
“The primordial solar nebula is much larger than previously thought, and this could have implications for studying the planet formation process,” said co-author Fumi Yoshida from Chiba Institute of Technology (Japan).
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