New Horizons Team to look a New Target Flyby

     NASA's First Pluto Flyby New Horizon will race past a small Kuiper belt object known as MU69 which is 4 billion miles from Earth.It is first spacecraft ever to reach farthest object. But over next six weeks, the New Horizons mission team gets an MU69 preview of sorts and a chance to gather some critical encounter-planning information, with a rare look at their target object from Earth. On 3rd June 2017, and then again on 10th July 2017, MU69 will occult - or block light from three different stars, one on each date. To observe June 3 Stellar Occultation, more than 50 team members and collaborators are deploying along projected viewing paths in Argentina and South Africa. They will fix Camera-equipped portable telescope on the occultation star and watch for the changes in its light that can tell them much more about MU69 itself.

Their primary objective is to determine if there are hazards near MU69 - rings, dust or even satellites - that could affect their flight planning, "said New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern, of Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. "But we also expect to learn more about its orbit and possible determine its size and shape. All of that will help their planning effort.