Regions In Space: Kuiper Belt

The Kuiper Belt is a doughnut-shaped region of icy bodies extending from Neptune’s orbit at 30 AU to about 50 AU from the Sun. It contains dwarf planets like Pluto, Haumea, and Makemake, and countless smaller icy objects, with a mass 20–200 times that of the Asteroid Belt.

Named after Dutch astronomer Gerard Kuiper, who theorized its existence in 1951.

It’s a reservoir of short-period comets and remnants from the Solar System’s formation 4.6 billion years ago.

Significant events include the discovery of the first Kuiper Belt Object (1992 QB1) by David Jewitt and Jane Luu.

NASA’s New Horizons mission explored Pluto in 2015 and Arrokoth in 2019, providing unprecedented data on these distant worlds.