Full Resolution It's December 27, and the science team has assembled for the Arrokoth flyby! Although it's been three years since the Pluto flyby, most of the same team has been working on the planning for this one, which we started on just after Pluto. I was on the Hazard Team searching for dust at Arrokoth (*) that could be in the way of the spacecraft, and we'd been here since Thanksgiving, except for a week off around Christmas. The rest of the team assembled in-person at "K-3d" -- i.e., three days before the flyby in the Kuiper belt.
(*) The official IAU name Arrokoth was introduced a year after the flyby, in 2019. We called it Ultima Thule at the time of flyby, which was always intended to be a temporary, informal name. In these slides, I use all three names interchangably.
