Ultima Thule
NASA's New Horizons probe's mission was to study Pluto and the Kuiper belt. Using the Hubble Telescope, astronomers discovered 2014 MU69 and decided to send the New Horizons probe to observe it. The asteroid was nicknamed "Ultima Thule" which means "beyond the known world" since it is the farthest celestial body we have visited. Five years after its discovery, New Horizons reached Ultima Thule earlier this year and it managed to raise more questions than answers. This distant asteroid was strange to begin with because it is actually two clumps of rock fused together, making it look like a large rocky snowman. This observation gave support to the idea that when the solar system was first forming, chunks of rock and ice would gravitate towards each other forming larger chunks called planetesimals. This is called the Planetesimal theory and you can read more about it here.
After having a closer look at Ultima Thule, we realized it is not what it originally appeared to be. Instead of the round shape originally expected, the asteroid has a strange shape that resemble... well, lumpy space pancakes. For more information about MU69's weird shape, you can read this article about it or watch the video linked below.
Hayabusa 2
The Hayabusa 2 probe is a mission from the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) visiting the asteroid Ryugu to collect samples and return them to Earth. Later this week, Hayabusa 2 will be shooting a small projectile at the asteroid and collecting the ejecta shot up from the surface. Learn more about Hayabusa's mission this week here!
Mars Base
Before humans can terraform another planet, we need to establish a base to accommodate a large population. Find out the obstacles we need to overcome before we can live on another planet in the video linked below. You can also read more about the technical issues here. If you are curious how difficult it would be to create a base on the moon, there would be less issues than making a Mars base, but not much less. Find out what we need to do to make a moon base in the second video linked below!
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