Hubble to begin search beyond Pluto for a New Horizons mission target
Monday, June 16, 2014 - 13:50
in Astronomy & Space
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope will be used to search for a suitable Kuiper Belt object that NASA's New Horizons space probe could visit. It would be our first and perhaps last look at such a remote relic from the distant past. The search is very challenging even for Hubble's sharp vision. It has to find something the size of Manhattan Island, as black as charcoal, and embedded against a snowstorm of background stars.