NASA Renames Ultima Thule
- The US Space Agency, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has recently renamed farthest cosmic body, earlier known as ‘Ultima Thule’ to ‘Arrokoth’ or ‘Sky’.
- The icy rock, which orbits in the dark and frigid Kuiper Belt about a billion miles beyond Pluto, was surveyed by the NASA spaceship New Horizons in January 2019.
- Ultima Thule measures approximately 30 km in diameter, and is irregularly shaped (snow-man). It has a reddish color, probably caused by exposure of hydrocarbons to sunlight over billions of years. It belongs to a class of Kuiper belt objects called the “cold classicals”, which have ....