Beyond the orbit of the eight planets in our Solar System , several aloof object make up the Kuiper Belt . The extent of this region has been reckon free-base on the breakthrough of such objects – but new observations are connote that it run low further out than previously believe .

NASA’sNew Horizonsspacecraft inspect the most noted Kuiper Belt Object ( KBO ) , the dwarf planetPluto . It then pilot by a little KBO call Arrokoth , and is now traveling across the belt . One of its instruments , the Venetia Burney Student Dust Counter ( SDC ) , measures floor of dust as the spacecraft locomote .

Named afterthe personthat named Pluto , the SDC was expected to see a bead in the amount of dust it picked up . The junk comes from collisions between KBOs , asteroids , and comets , as well as KBOs ' bombing from interstellar dust . reflexion from Earth consider the belt to extend to 50 times the distance between Earth and the Sun ( or oneAstronomical Unit , AU ) .

But New Horizons is at 55 AU , and it is still going substantial .

The squad ’s analysis suggest that the smash might go all the means to 80 AU or maybe even further , implying that KBOs might also extend further . If that is indeed the case , there are many undiscovered objects in theKuiper Belt .

“ New Horizons is making the first direct measurements of interplanetary rubble far beyond Neptune and Pluto , so every observation could go to a breakthrough , ” leave writer of the raw study Alex Doner from the University of Colorado Boulder , who serves as SDC lead-in , say in astatement . “ The idea that we might have find an extended Kuiper Belt — with a whole young population of objects colliding and producing more dust – offer another cue in puzzle out the whodunit of the solar arrangement ’s most distant regions . ”

The team is not push aside option – perchance the dust is being pushed by sun to more distant regions of the solar system , messing with the expected measurements . Or perhaps New Horizons has encountered short - hold up meth that is adding a irregular extra amount of dust when only little is present . It ’s possible , but give the difficulties of finding KBOs , it ’s not surprising that we have not found a big universe of them .

“ These new scientific resultant from New Horizons may be the first meter that any spacecraft has key a newfangled population of bodies in our solar system of rules , ” pronounce Alan Stern , New Horizons principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder . “ I ca n’t wait to see how much farther out these elevated Kuiper Belt rubble story go . ”

The upshot are put out inThe Astrophysical Journal Letters .