The solar nebula origin of (486958) Arrokoth, a primordial contact binary in the Kuiper Belt.
basic_science · Level V
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- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 32054695.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1126/science.aay6620.
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Abstract
The New Horizons spacecraft's encounter with the cold classical Kuiper Belt object (486958) Arrokoth (provisional designation 2014 MU<sub>69</sub>) revealed a contact-binary planetesimal. We investigated how Arrokoth formed and found that it is the product of a gentle, low-speed merger in the early Solar System. Its two lenticular lobes suggest low-velocity accumulation of numerous smaller planetesimals within a gravitationally collapsing cloud of solid particles. The geometric alignment of the lobes indicates that they were a co-orbiting binary that experienced angular momentum loss and subsequent merger, possibly because of dynamical friction and collisions within the cloud or later gas drag. Arrokoth's contact-binary shape was preserved by the benign dynamical and collisional environment of the cold classical Kuiper Belt and therefore informs the accretion processes that operated in the early Solar System.