NASA's New Horizons spacecraft, which made its famous flyby of Pluto in July, has a new place to go.

Scientists working with the mission have picked their first-choice destination for New Horizons' post-Pluto existence.

The tiny object, now known as 2014 MU69, orbits the sun nearly 1 billion miles past Pluto in the Kuiper Belt — a group of icy objects in Pluto's part of space.

“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,” New Horizons science team member John Spencer said in a statement.

“The detailed images and other data that New Horizons could obtain from a KBO [Kuiper Belt Object] flyby will revolutionize our understanding of the Kuiper Belt and KBOs.”

Researchers want to learn more about objects in the Kuiper Belt because they represent the earliest bits of rock and ice that formed in the solar system. By studying those bodies, scientists on Earth are able to figure out more about how the solar system — including Earth — evolved over billions of years. New Horizons is already cruising in the Kuiper Belt, more than 3 billion miles away from Earth.

If all goes according to plan, New Horizons should be able to make its closest pass with 2014 MU69 on Jan. 1, 2019.

2014 MU69 is one of two possible flyby destinations for New Horizons that is still on the table, but it is the science team's first choice for the extended mission. However, NASA will still conduct a review before approving that object as the craft's next possible flyby target.

Contingent on additional funding

New Horizons still needs additional funding in order to continue its mission, but researchers are now planning in the hopes that more money will be devoted to the mission. Scientists working with the probe are likely to submit a proposal to extend the mission by next year, NASA said.

“While discussions whether to approve this extended mission will take place in the larger context of the planetary science portfolio, we expect it to be much less expensive than the prime mission while still providing new and exciting science,” John Grunsfeld, the chief of NASA's science mission directorate, said in a statement.

At the moment, scientists think that 2014 MU69 is about 30 miles across and only 1% the size of Pluto, meaning that the object could be the "building blocks of Kuiper Belt planets such as Pluto," NASA said. Scientists think that these Kuiper Belt objects have been around since the solar system formed about 4.6 billion years ago.

The path New Horizons might take to its next target. Image: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI/Alex Parker

In order to find the best options for its next mission, New Horizons had a bit of an assist from another intrepid spacecraft.

In 2014, the Hubble Space Telescope discovered five objects that could serve as New Horizons' far-flung Kuiper Belt target. Since that time, the team narrowed the options down to two, NASA says.

If this flyby happens, it will mark the first time this tiny, mysterious object has come into focus. Like New Horizons did with Pluto, the spacecraft could resolve the possible craters and cliffs of a never-before-studied world.