The Kuiper Belt
The Kuiper Belt is a doughnut-shaped region of icy objects beyond the orbit of Neptune. It is home to Pluto and most of the known dwarf planets and some comets.
Kuiper Belt Facts
The Kuiper Belt is a large, doughnut-shaped region of icy bodies extending far beyond the orbit of Neptune.
The Kuiper Belt is home to Pluto and Arrokoth. Both worlds were visited by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft. There may be millions of other icy worlds in the Kuiper Belt that were left over from the formation of our solar system.
These two multiple-exposure images from Hubble show Kuiper Belt Objects against a background of stars in the constellation Sagittarius. The two KBOs are roughly 4 billion miles from Earth.
NASA, ESA, SwRI, JHU/APL, New Horizons KBO Search Team
Kuiper Belt Exploration
Most of what we know about the Kuiper Belt comes from ground-based telescopes and the Hubble Space Telescope.
Only one spacecraft has visited the Kuiper Belt. NASA’s New Horizons flew past Pluto in July 2015 – sending back the first clear, close-up images of the tiny world. On Jan. 1, 2019, the spacecraft flew by a Kuiper Belt object later named Arrokoth.
The Hubble Space Telescope floats above Earth after being released from space shuttle Columbia’s robot arm at the conclusion of a servicing mission in March 2002.
NASA
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Kuiper Belt
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