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Site / KuiperBelt
Excerpts from NASA.gov Just outside of Neptune’s orbit is a ring of icy bodies. We call it the Kuiper Belt. It’s pronounced ky-purr. This is where you’ll find dwarf planet Pluto. It’s the most famous of the objects floating in the Kuiper Belt, which are also called Kuiper Belt Objects, or KBOs. The Kuiper Belt is named after a scientist named Gerard Kuiper. In 1951 he had the idea that a belt of icy bodies might have existed beyond Neptune when the solar system formed. He was trying to explain where comets with small orbits came from. No one had seen anything out there yet because it’s hard to see small comets past Neptune even with the best telescopes. But even without being able to see it with his own eyes, Kuiper made a prediction. And it turned out to be right. Travel to the Kuiper BeltThe Kuiper belt is a region of our solar system that extends from about 30 to 50 astronomical units (AU) from the sun. One AU is the average distance from the earth to the sun, which is about 93 million miles (150 million kilometers). So the Kuiper belt is a vast and distant region, which is about 40 AU from the sun. The time it would take a spacecraft to reach the Kuiper belt from earth would depend on several factors, including the spacecraft's speed, the trajectory it takes, and the gravitational forces it encounters along the way. At a minimum, it would take several years for a spacecraft to reach the Kuiper belt from earth. For example, the New Horizons spacecraft, which was launched in 2006 and is currently exploring the Kuiper belt, took about 9.5 years to reach Pluto. However, the journey to the Kuiper belt could be significantly shorter if a spacecraft was able to take advantage of gravitational slingshots or other propulsion techniques to speed up its journey. Learn more: |