On Friday afternoon, NASA has announced about the next target of New Horizons spacecraft. After making a flyby of Pluto in July, the spacecraft’s next mission is 2014 MU69, which is nicknamed PT 1 or ‘potential target 1’.

The icy body is located nearly a billion miles farther into the Kuiper Belt region beyond Neptune. It is 1.6 billion kilometres farther away than Pluto. The Kuiper Belt contains thousands of icy objects that differ in size, some are quite small and others are big enough to be considered as dwarf planets like Pluto.

In late October or early November, New Horizons will change direction to the new target. It will reach at its new target on New Year's Day 2019. After reaching there, the spacecraft will take measurements and detailed images of the object that has never been observed before.

New Horizons science team member John Spencer of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder said, “There's so much that we can learn from close-up spacecraft observations that we'll never learn from Earth, as the Pluto flyby demonstrated so spectacularly”.

The data will significantly improve our understanding of the Kuiper Belt and KBOs. Officially, the new Horizons mission will end on October 1, 2016. Scientists will require funds to study PT1 and for which they will apply early next year.

It is thought that PT1 is deep frozen since its formation. As per scientists, PT1 and such small objects are considered to be the building blocks that have formed Kuiper Belt dwarf planets like Pluto.