Distant space ice world gets new name after first one had a Nazi connection
- Snowman-shaped space object previously known as ‘Ultima Thule’ will now be known as ‘Arrokoth’
The bundle of ice and rock was discovered using a telescope operated in Maryland. It was studied up close by a spacecraft built in the same state. So when Nasa scientists had to choose an official name for the most distant object they had ever explored, they borrowed a word from the original inhabitants of this region: Arrokoth, the Powhatan/Algonquian term for “sky”.
“Bestowing the name Arrokoth signifies the strength and endurance of the indigenous Algonquian people of the Chesapeake region,” Lori Glaze, the director of Nasa’s planetary science division, said at a naming ceremony Wednesday.
“Their heritage continues to be a guiding light for all who search for meaning and understanding of the origins of the universe and the celestial connection of humanity.”
The name also replaces a nickname with an unintended white supremacist connection: “Ultima Thule”, a medieval term used to describe the lands beyond the edges of maps.
Nazis used it to refer to a mythical homeland of the Aryan people, as was reported in Newsweek, and it remains in use by modern far-right groups.
Arrokoth is a Kuiper Belt object, one of millions of icy bodies that exist beyond the orbit of Neptune. As a frozen fragment of the material that formed the planets, scientists say, it holds clues to the earliest days of the solar system.