How Arrokoth Shocked NASA Scientists 

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!

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.

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!

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

I'll never feel upset about slow download speeds again

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

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

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...

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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!

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

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

Arrokoth looks like an eroded sculpture of a humanoid from the waist up... Is anyone else seeing this or, have I completely lost it?

"they predicted it's shape exactly", "... Well they knew it would be a long shape" I think 'exactly' has different meaning to us

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

I can’t wait til Arrokoth shows up on an episode of Ancient Aliens. “Is it a rare celestial body, or could it be the head and body of a statue created by an advanced alien nation?”

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.

What an incredible achievement

Man I've missed like your last 10 videos. Never got recommended to me damnit

I love how these videos have "shocked scientists" all the time, imagine when (if) we find out proof of intelligent life out there, the scientists are going to implode.

"Scientists found a new object...." Object thats 14 billion years old: 👁👄👁

Watching this while wearing my black Astrum hoodie.

Can we all give an appreciative round of applause for Alex's excellent music selections for his videos? I know I have added many to my music playlists thanks to Astrum :D

2:43 I got to say, that is one hell of a timelapse. It is an absolutely insane perspective, quite beutiful.

The merger area is brighter in the same way that plastic is brighter in areas where it is stressed by bending.

Amazing video like always! Theese videos are full of quality and class,and I like your way to explane space things. This is a very good channel in my opinion! Keep it up!

YEAH! FINALLY! I was anxiously waiting for this video Alex!

That segue into curiosity stream was so smooth I didn't even clock it as an add for about thirty seconds.

In Australia we are envious of your 1k download speeds....

@ Astrum You're young, aren't you? Because it seems like you skipped that part of our technological evolution where we had these things called Dial-Up Modems. That was how we used to access the internet back in the old days. The average speed back then was around 33 Kb/s to 56 Kb/s For those of us who remember what THAT was like and how painful it was to have to do anything over the internet that was bandwidth-intensive (downloading songs could take minutes/ hours, downloading movies could take days, downloading games could take weeks!), well, the amount of progress we've seen is nothing short of miraculous. To think that we're able to receive information from a probe 45 AU away at a rate of 1Kb/s is pretty fucking amazing stuff!! Sure, 1 KB/s sounds really slow and compared to most broadband connections these days, it really is. But for those of us who remember _the good old days_ of the internet, we also remember that even at speeds of only 1Kb/s, as long as you're continuously connected and you don't have other things draining your bandwidth, you can just leave it to download and you'll have all the data you could want, before too long.

I was beginning to lose hope for another in-depth Astrum video! Thank you for this excellent report on Arrokoth, Alex.

The SpaceEngine music in the background gives me so much nostalgia...

It's our Solar System's largest pawn chess piece ♟

Alex you have such refreshing voice. It's a treat to listen to you explaining things about the cosmos in such detail. Thanks and keep up the good work!

Isn’t New Horizons soon to become the furthest object humans have ever sent? Because it is so fast?

Utterly fascinating! The older I get, the more I stand in awe of science.

Sounds like a zone name in World of Warcraft.

Was fascinated by the initial coverage, but I had never seen those better images. Incredible. The precision of this flyby is just insane. An object, about 30 km across, at a distance of 6,600,000,000 km from earth, after 13 years of travel, passing at 14 km/s... and any changes to New Horizons trajectory could only have been made after it passed Pluto.

What a great doc. So informative and clearly explained. Thank you. Loved it!

4:38 it a sad snowman

These double lobed asteroids are very common due their electrical formation. Even the little Martian "blueberries" contained some with double lobes.

Awesome content. You are one of my fav channels in regards to space 😊 I have watched a lot and will binge the rest soon lol honestly above the quality of regular television. Cheers my friend! For those itching for more, Some of my other favs are (and my suggestion to start) : David Butler - (especially "how far away is it" & "how old is it" playlists) SEA - ("great attractor" & "the cosmic scale" videos were amazing) Anton Petrov - (daily space and sciences) Destiny - (space, science & military) SpaceRip - ("seeing inside the sun" or "real images from our solar system" ) Kosmo - (interesting video on Stephenson 2-18) PBS Spacetime

Arrokoth is 36km long. Amazing that we even knew about it beforehand given how far away KPOs are. It would pretty sensational if New Horizons stumbled across Planet X. Or confirmed the existence of the Oort Cloud.

Arrokoth is so cool!

Its amazing how scientist could analyze a rock that is outside of solar system

Should also mention other Pluto moons which were also photographed for the first time

Wow, the way they predicted its shape blew my mind

It's pretty amazing how easily a compound like hydrogen cyanide forms. It's often thought of as being novel because of its somewhat loaded status as a powerful toxin, but the hydrogen cyanide molecule is one of the simplest out there. It's just a carbon atom with a hydrogen atom single bonded to one side and a nitrogen atom triple-bonded to the other side. Like this: H - C ≡ N That's all hydrogen cyanide is, just hydrogen, carbon and nitrogen, the first, fifth and sixth most abundant elements in the universe, respectively. There's probably a whole hell of a lot of cyanide out there in the universe. Some recent papers also talk about protonated hydrogen cyanide being of astrophysical interest. It's the same structure as above, but the nitrogen has an extra (4th) bond, and a second hydrogen atom bonds to the nitrogen. Like this: H - C ≡ N+ - H

Great video, I scramble for any bit of information on Arrokoth (2014 MU69)! Fascinating, thank you.

In the far distant future we will capture arrakoth and put it in a museum, a space museum in space ofcourse.

Once leaving Pluto there was still 3 more yrs of traveling! Then when it's only 172 million km away the final approach begins?! There's absolutely no way I can begin to fathom/understand how much space is in the universe.

Been waiting for updated images,... Thank you.

This video is so well made. The sense of fascination and wonder it fills me with... I can't believe man can find a moving 32km object billions of kilometers from earth and hit it with such precision and accuracy. And then thousands of us back home get to watch with emoji inspiring expressions on our faces. Thank you for this gift of a channel.

Thank you for all that you do for this community I love your videos ❤️❤️

I totally agree! The funny-looking peanut-shaped object is undoubtedly a product of two objects melded or joined into one. As always, great work! I LOVE how you cover subject matters that one would otherwise NEVER hear about!

Loved it! thank you for making these videos. Absolutely can tell how much love in these. Thank you again.

Its a cosmic snowman, that lost its head.

Thank you for offering more information. I was very interested in this object from the beginning.

Please, Ganymede next! Love your videos!

It amazes me that NewHorizons is able to adjust its trajectory to intercept Arrokoth when in wasn't in the original plan. And snap great shots AND send them back? Simply fascinating! What an incredible story. Thank you so much for the top-notch upload! ✨💫

Another terrific video, thank you. What of that odd oval feature on the larger lobe? Have the scientists commented about it?

Informative, graphs and charts, 3D simulations. Worth watching.

Brilliant insight. Thank you

7:25 - Still a better love story than Twilight.

Humans: We visited an asteroid near Pluto, by sending a probe that flew by 3500 km of it! Aliens mining asteroids: WHAAA...?!

That approach time lapse was incredible thanks for including it in this video

Until we find a method of communication that is faster than light we won't be doing much science beyond these distances without humans being there or A.I. intelligent enough to do the work of a human.

You seriously make the best astronomy videos on RU-vid

That thumbnail is eerie.

i love the intro, its so soothing and calming to me

Thanks!

These are the best videos on RU-vid

My Celestron C-8 had a bit of difficulty seeing Arrokoth's smaller craters. Maybe I'll try the Barlow.

Very well done. Thank you.

It's a Proto Snowman - Just add carrot!

An abundance of Tholians on its surface! I hope they brought some good heaters with them... it's a little cold for Tholians way out there.

Some pictures of Arrokot sort of remind me of the foetal baby seen at the end of the movie 2001 A Space Odyssey.

I just discovered this beautiful channel the wonderful background music and the most pleasant narration I’ve heard. Yep I’m binge watching ❤️👍 just down right spectacular.

We need an army of drone spacecraft to visit and analyze “everything” we have so many unknowns even inside Mars’ orbit.

Cool to learn about tholins, my first guess was it was iron, and the lobes had cold-welded

I prefer the original name, Ultima Thule. It was a lot cooler.

Thanks Alex for your amazing narration 🔥

It looks like a rocky little snowman ☃️

I am just wondering if there is any plan to place powerful relays to amplify signals from a distance? Say a couple of relays orbiting the sun every 25 AU.

why does it look like voldemort tho?

Superb video of (part of) an astonishing mission. I'd not seen the high resolution images, nor the animation of New Horizon's approach.

Yay Astrum

I think its pancake shaped because the outer edge of the pancake may be the side that tends to collide with stuff. Kinda like a wheel that picks up mud on the tread but doesn't pick it up so much on the sides.

I'd love to believe that someday, Humans will visit Arrokoth to find out it secrets in person, but I wouldn't place any bets on that.

That is wonderful, thank you for doing a video on this. So glad I subbed, as I knew nothing about Arrokoth until I watched your channel.

Proof that there are aliens. They made a snowman

Loved the video! One minor detail, the drone sound in the music throughout the first minute of the video only shows up in the left channel in stereo sound. Personally found this to be really grating, but I understand if you like the effect. Overall the sound design in your videos is phenomenal. Just found that one thing to be uncomfortable and figured I would mention it on the off chance it was something you just hadn't noticed. Cheers man, and have a great day.

The parentheses with the “miles” included is everything to us non-astronomer western fans.

The first thing that I noticed is that the larger lobe, Ultima, is made from several chunks. I expected the tholins. And please, it's not 45 times further, but 45 times as far.