KBO encounters Options

[xtruel]

Hi,

I’m regular follower of NH and I’m also interested in the 2nd leg of the mission, i.e the 2016+ KBOs encounters. Does anyone know when operations about this leg (starting with searching objects of interest with HST or some other earth-based means, I suppose) are expected to begin ?

[tfisher]

Are Kuiper belt objects distributed like a belt, or more like a shell?

When I find close asteroids (the ones with three closely spaced bright marks), they always seem to move approximately horizontally across the image. But when I find distant bright blobs with a corresponding dark blob, they seem just as likely to be separated in any direction.

Or is it just that there are so many other sources of variable brightness besides KBO's, that most of the time when there are a bright blob seeming paired with a dark one it is just a chance occurrence. Like two out-of-sync variable stars near each other from our viewpoint?