Arrokoth comes into focus

New analysis of data captured last year by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft reveals the distant Solar System object once known as 2014 MU69, now called Arrokoth, in sharp detail. The 36-kilometre-long Kuiper belt object is extremely red, probably because cosmic rays have blasted its surface to create red organic molecules. Its two lobes are thought to have merged gently in the early days of the Solar System, at least four billion years ago.