Produced by: Tarun Mishra
A recent study has unveiled that Arrokoth, a distant object in the Kuiper Belt, contains significant amounts of organic molecules, including complex sugars.
In 2019, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft flew by Arrokoth, the most distant Solar System object ever visited by a spacecraft, located beyond Neptune's orbit.
Credit: NASA, Joseph Olmsted (STScI)
Scientists from the US and France propose that Arrokoth's unusual reddish colour is due to the presence of glucose and other sugar forms on its surface.
Analysis of the data from the New Horizons flyby revealed that Arrokoth, nicknamed ''sugar world,'' has a distinctive reddish hue linked to complex organic molecules.
Credit: Chaojiang Zhang
Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study noted that Arrokoth's surface features are associated with methanol and complex sugars like ribose and glucose.
Researchers simulated Arrokoth's conditions over the past 1.8 billion years, finding that cosmic ray bombardment could produce sugar-type compounds contributing to its pinkish-red color.
The study indicated that some sugars found on Arrokoth resemble those in RNA on Earth, hinting at the possibility of life. However, NASA states that Arrokoth is too cold to support life as we know it.
Formerly known as 2014 MU69 and Ultima Thule, Arrokoth remains the most distant object discovered by a space probe, enriching our understanding of the Kuiper Belt and the outer Solar System.