Now, NASA has released two new illustrations of what MU69 might look like based on that data. They think that overall the object is likely about 20 miles long, but its observed shape raises even more questions.

The data indicates that if MU69 is a single object, it's probably long and oval, like a stretched football or a plump baguette with a big bite taken out of it. However, there's a chance it's actually two objects traveling through the void of space together—maybe even close enough to touch.

It's not a total surprise for planetary scientists that they might be seeing double. Some estimates put contact binaries—a system with two objects touching each other—at occurring in 10 percent to 30 percent of Kuiper Belt objects.

"This new finding is simply spectacular. The shape of MU69 is truly provocative, and could mean another first for New Horizons going to a binary object in the Kuiper Belt,” Alan Stern, principal investigator of New Horizons said in a statement. “I could not be happier with the occultation results, which promise a scientific bonanza for the flyby.”

New Horizon's will pass MU69 on January 1, 2020. Researchers will continue to gather more information from ground- and space-based telescopes in advance of the brisk drive by, when the spacecraft will switch on its cameras and instruments and snap pictures of the frozen, distant object(s) and send all that information back to Earth, a postcard from a blind date at the edges of our Solar System.