How Arrokoth Shocked NASA Scientists

Almost everything you could want to know about New Horizon's visit to Arrokoth.

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Image Credits: NASA/ESO/ESA
Music Credit: Adrian Chifu - Eternal Traveler

[alanhyt]

New Horizons is one of those rare machines that functions better and longer than anyone expected. It continues to provide data that adds to our understanding of this solar system and, presumably, other solar systems like ours.
The craft operates in cold too bitter to imagine, and has a connection to earth that's slower than my first dial-up internet, but the range of analyses it can make on objects and the high res photos it can take is sophisticated and most impressive. What an amazing project!

[adamnixon]

I'll never feel upset about slow download speeds again

[DeathbyProxy]

That last fly-by 'video' of Arrokoth, it looks so raw, so real. With all the high quality, digitally retouched, press-ready photos of celestial objects it's easy to get caught up in the beauty of them and view them like works of art, but seeing those low quality shots of an asteroid moving about, it really puts it into perspective that these are real things floating about up there, moving, spinning, orbiting. It's the same with photos taken on the surface of planets, moons, and asteroids, these are real places where we could stand. And I find that more beautiful than the photos you see in the newspaper articles.

[jsg]

I really love how with videos and images Alex puts a description like "new horizons launch", "not true colour image", "artist impression of..." Etc. It really helps to give a much better understanding of what I'm looking at. I don't like how in documentaries they expect you to know whether it's an artist impression or not and you get false ideas of what you're looking at. Thank you for doing this and for making these videos!

[wyattchiordi]

Blows my mind how they can intercept something so tiny and far away. Especially with the communication lag between the craft and earth

[hannahkimble]

Arrokoth is a name that sounds straight out of Sci-Fi, I love it. Reminds me of Dune’s Arrakis.

[_rlb]

Who else thinks that, in the thumbnail, Arrakoth looks like an orange snowman with a sad face and some buttons down his body? So cold and lonely...

[robertgrosser]

The white ring around its neck is from wearing a collar, so it is obviously someone's pet rock that has been lost.

[kirbymarchbarcena]

Arrokoth...sounds like a name taken from a Tolkien novel

[juandiegoprado]

That's gotta be the smoothest transition I've ever seen to a Curiosity Stream ad

[kdfkd]

Astrum is by far my favorite astronomy channel. You don't output as often as some other channels but your soothing British accent and stellar production values at 1080p are super worth the wait. I could listen to you read Parliamentary committee transcripts. I eagerly await the next.

[CarthagoMike]

An Astrum video a day keeps the braincells from degrading away.

[stevetobias]

Almost looks like a statue in it's early phases, notice the sad face. Probably from being seen before it's ready, lol.

[Ignazio_Avulso]

It's incredible as each of Astrum's short videos is packed with information no less than an academic lecture.

[honodle]

They found out it's a rock. It's a cold rock. It's an odd shaped, cold, distant rock. It's an odd colored rock with few impact craters so not a lot of rocks hit it.

[TatteredBeanie]

It looks humanoid. 2 dots for a nose and a slit for mouth below depression on smaller chunk. Awesome

[inourhands]

For the history books, it was on our second Argentina deployment -- not Senegal, as described in the graphics and narration -- that we discovered the binary shape of 2014MU69 (Arrokoth). The Senegal deployment had fewer data chords, as most observation teams were clouded out or faced instrumentation issues. Having an additional data set from Senegal helped to confirm the objects could indeed be very close together, rather than one being simply eclipsed by the other, as New Horizons later confirmed upon flyby. So glad to see this mission still getting such extraordinary coverage!

[ekimozturk]

Why knowing more about arrokoth make me feel better as a human being? I mean it is just a random piece of rock, wandering in the empty abbys and i feel better knowing more about it… It is truly magnificent to see a picture of something from that far away.

[effen_aey_man]

I was sitting here thinking "What is Arrokoth?" Then I realized it's the new name scientist gave to Ultima Thule

[CrankyPantss]

Your knowledge and never ending sense of wonder makes this channel one of the best on YouTube. It’s clearly the best on all things space. Thanks for another beautifully done video.