Arrokoth, a distant object in the Kuiper Belt, contains significant amounts of organic molecules, including complex sugars, giving it the new nickname “Sugar World,” a study has reported.
The study, led by planetary scientist Alan Stern and his team from the Southwest Research Institute, was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and provides new insights into the chemical processes that took place in the early solar system and possibly on early Earth.
Arrokoth, formerly known as 2014 MU69 and Ultima Thule, is the most distant object ever explored by a spacecraft. The New Horizons mission, which previously captured stunning images of Pluto, made a historic flyby of Arrokoth on January 1, 2019. The mission provided detailed images and data of the object, which is located approximately 4 billion miles from Earth in the Kuiper Belt, a region of icy bodies beyond Neptune.
An illustration shows the abundant sugars and reddish coloration on the surface of Arrokoth and an artist’s depiction of the Kuiper Belt. A new study provides insights into the chemical processes that took place in… An illustration shows the abundant sugars and reddish coloration on the surface of Arrokoth and an artist’s depiction of the Kuiper Belt. A new study provides insights into the chemical processes that took place in the early solar system.
Ahmad Sarem / Chaojiang Zhang
“We set a record! Never before has a spacecraft explored something so far away. I mean, think of it. We’re a billion miles further than Pluto, and now we’re going to keep going into the Kuiper Belt,” Stern said at the time, Space.com reported.
Researchers analyzing data from the flyby found that Arrokoth has a distinctive reddish color, which is linked to the presence of complex organic molecules. These molecules include methanol, water ice and various types of carbon-rich compounds.
Methanol ice on Arrokoth, when exposed to cosmic rays, was found to produce a variety of organic compounds, including sugars like ribose and glucose. These findings suggest that the surface of Arrokoth has undergone significant chemical processing, transforming simple molecules into more complex ones over billions of years.
The discovery of these organic molecules is crucial for understanding the chemical processes that may have contributed to the emergence of life on Earth.
“It’s amazing to see this object so well preserved that its shape directly reveals these details of its assembly from a set of building blocks all very similar to one another,” Will Grundy, a co-author of the study, said in a statement in October.
The mounds on Arrokoth’s surface, which are large relative to the object itself, are believed to be some of its original building blocks. These features provide valuable clues about the conditions and processes that were present in the early solar system.
“If the mounds are indeed representative of the building blocks of ancient planetesimals like Arrokoth, then planetesimal formation models will need to explain the preferred size for these building blocks,” Stern said in the October statement.
The New Horizons mission continues to provide data that could enhance our understanding of the Kuiper Belt and its objects. The spacecraft is expected to explore additional targets in the Kuiper Belt, further expanding our knowledge of the early solar system.
Stern told Space.com in 2020, “It would be silly not to look for another target.”
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