The solar nebula origin of (486958) Arrokoth, a primordial contact binary in the Kuiper belt

W. B. McKinnon, D. C. Richardson, J. C. Marohnic +26

The New Horizons spacecraft's encounter with the cold classical Kuiper belt object (486958) Arrokoth (formerly 2014 MU69) revealed a contact-binary planetesimal. We investigate how…