Adrift in the Kuiper Belt?
"Arrokoth may have been more important than our discoveries at Pluto," Stern commented."For decades, there have been two warring computer models about how planets got their start and. One was through high-speed collisions in their orbit around the sun, and the other was through local collapse clouds with very gentle collisions." After a thorough examination of Arrokoth, the latter model was validated.
If NASA ends up cutting funding to this modestly budgeted mission, a new team would be installed—presumably one with no direct experience in outer solar system operations—with the focus shifted to low-level data gathering about heliophysics, the distant plasma environment of the sun. This reduced mission would utilize just a small fraction of the spacecraft's ongoing science capability.
"We've been in flight for going on 18 years, and we have every prospect of flying as long as the Voyagers," now going on 46 years, Stern said."At that point we would be well beyond Kuiper Belt exploration and into interstellar space.
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