New Horizons probe conducted a flyby to distant Kuiper Belt

In a recent aerospace development NASA sent its New Horizon for the furthest flyby till date. The probe recorded an object 2014, MU69, which was four billion miles from Earth. They conducted a ceremony in Washington at the NASA headquarters where the named the newly discovered object Arrokoth which is said to mean ‘Sky’ in Algonquian and Powhatan, two Native American dialects. Nick Miles who represented the Pamunkey tribe performed the opening song for the ceremony. The object had been previously referred to asUltima Thule which means beyond the known but the name had to be changed due to strong Nazi references.

"I've said it a number of times, I think New Horizons is an example, one of the best examples in our time, of raw exploration, and the term Ultima Thule, which is very old, many centuries old, possibly over a thousand years old, is a wonderful name for exploration. I would say that just because some bad guys once liked that term, we're not going to let them hijack it,” said Alan Stern, the mission's principal investigator at a press conference preceding the NASA event.

The name ‘Arrokoth’ was chosen to show significance to the New Horizons mission and the Hubble Space Telescope which were both operated from Maryland, a Native American stronghold.