A new study from researchers at the Southwest Research Institute has unearthed a fascinating discovery about Arrokoth, a trans-Neptunian object made famous by the New Horizons probe on New Year’s Day ...

On a frigid orbit beyond Neptune, some of the solar system’s smallest worlds project a strange silhouette. Two rounded lobes, pressed together with a narrow “neck,” like a snowman that never melted.

A new study led by Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) Planetary Scientist and Associate Vice President Dr. Alan Stern posits that the large, approximately 5-kilometer-long mounds that dominate the ...

In A Nutshell Arrokoth, a snowman-shaped object billions of miles from Earth, is one of the oldest and least-disturbed relics of the early solar system Scientists have long debated whether its two ...

Astronomers had decent guesses about how these peanut-shaped asteroids formed but couldn’t get the physics to work—until now.

This time last year, the New Horizons mission visited the furthest object humanity has ever reached — Arrokoth, beyond the orbit of Pluto in an area called the Kuiper Belt. Now, scientists have ...

Arrokoth has a geometric albedo of p_V = 0.21_ (-0.04)^ (+0.05) at a wavelength of 550 nm and ~0.24 at 610 nm. Arrokoth’s geometric albedo is greater than the median but consistent with a distribution ...

A new study posits that the large, approximately 5-kilometer-long mounds that dominate the appearance of the larger lobe of the pristine Kuiper Belt object Arrokoth are similar enough to suggest a ...

The large mound structures that dominate one of the lobes of the Kuiper belt object Arrokoth are similar enough to suggest a common origin, according to a new study led by Southwest Research Institute ...