Photo Courtesy of NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STScI)

An artist’s impression of a Kuiper Belt object (KBO)

Half of a NASA mission launched in 2006 was almost compromised because scientists were unable to find a suitable target at the edge of the solar system. But eyes from Arizona helped fix that.

The New Horizon mission from NASA is to complete the first half of its mission by passing a probe by Pluto in the summer of 2015. It will record data and images of Pluto up close, which has not been done before.

After that, the craft is to pass a large object in the Kuiper Belt, the vast rim of debris at the solar system’s edge. The hope is to collect data on an object that has had little to no effect from heat or radiation from the sun, as the Kuiper belt is about 4 billion miles away.

However, researchers were having trouble finding an object large enough to accurately reflect imaging from the craft. That delay could have made it too late to change trajectory. But with help from the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, a project partner, they identified three objects suitable for data collection. They float a short billion miles past Pluto and are expected to fly by early 2018.