A NASA spacecraft might have another object on its sights soaring past Pluto next summer.
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has found three faraway bodies that the New Horizons probe could possibly visit after completing its flyby of Pluto system in July 2015.
Researchers believe one of the objects is definitely reachable, while further tracking is needed to determine if the other two are accessible, according to a Hubble news release.
"This has been a very challenging search, and it's great that in the end Hubble could accomplish a detection - one NASA mission helping another," said Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado, principal investigator of the New Horizons mission, in a statement.
The $700 million New Horizons mission launched back in 2006 with the goal of returning the first-ever close looks at Pluto and its moons. Stern and his colleagues have always wanted to fly the probe to another object in the Kuiper Belt however, the ring of bodies beyond Neptune, after the Pluto encounter.
Another flyby would also increase researchers' knowledge of the Kuiper Belt as well, according to mission team members. Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs) have never been heat-treated by the sun, so they're viewed as pristine building blocks left over from the solar system's formation nearly 4.6 billion years ago, according to the release.
Scientists started the hunt for additional KBOs back in 2011 using some of the biggest ground-based telescopes in the world. It was a difficult task, since KBOs are small, and all of them are dim and far away.
The search helped the scientists find some new objects, none of which were within New Horizons' fuel reach however.
After applying for time on Hubble, the scientists were granted use of the spacecraft for an initial pilot study this June, and then a wider survey that lasted July to September.
Analysis of Hubble data showed that three new KBOs, which are 1 billion miles beyond Pluto, range in size from 15 to 34 miles wide. The KBOs are about 10 times bigger than a normal comet as well, and 1 to 2 percent as big as Pluto, according to the release.
"We started to get worried that we could not find anything suitable, even with Hubble, but in the end the space telescope came to the rescue," said New Horizons science team member John Spencer, also of SwRI, in a statement. "There was a huge sigh of relief when we found suitable KBOs; we are over the moon about this detection."
The New Horizons team will choose which KBO to visit next summer, Stern said to Space.com.
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