Hubble Searching for Icy Worlds

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope is on the hunt for an icy world just beyond Pluto. The speedy New Horizons spacecraft will be visiting Pluto next year, and NASA scientists are looking for another pit stop for it to explore. Unfortunately, this icy object is tough to spot.

National Geographicexplains:

A suitable Kuiper Belt object might be about the size of Manhattan and charcoal black, making it very hard to spot, according to the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), which manages the space telescope. These frozen worlds are considered leftovers from the dawn of the solar system, and exploring them may reveal conditions dating to the sun’s infancy.

Image credit: Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute (JHUAPL/SwRI)