minus229k1:

NASA is looking for names for New Horizons’ next target, 2014 MU69, and actually asks the public to help them. 

Current choices are already on hand, like Z’ha’dum, the fictional planet from the Babylon 5-universe, Camalor, after the fictional city in the Kuiper Belt in Robert L. Forward’s novel Camelot 30K, and Mjölnir, after Thor’s hammer. 
What comes into sight is that 2014  MU69 might actually be a binary body, so proposals of names that go well together are quite handy as of now. In case they actually  build a contact-binary – in which the two celestial bodies touch – a single name will do, though.

Less “serious” proposed names are nut-themed, since the body is a bit shaped like a nut – ranging from Peanut to Almond to Cashew; another one is Spacerock McSpaceface. Nomination guidelines for bodies are quite broad, although no political, religious or commercial suggestions are accepted. The name should refer to the tiny world as it is  cold, distant, and old, at the outer fronter of the solar system.

The contest is on tip 1 December; the flyby will take place on New Year’s Day 2019. Fellow worlds in the Kuiper Belt are often named after creation myths from all over the globe.