A snowman spaced space rock is actually flat, new NASA pictures show.
Images from the New Horizons spacecraft show a new perspective of the small cosmic body four billion miles away from Earth.
The two-lobed object, nicknamed Ultima Thule, resembles a two-ball snowman however new images show that it is flatter than originally thought.
Pictures released late last week - taken shortly after closest approach on New Year's Day - provide an outline of the side not illuminated by the sun.
"Seeing more data has significantly changed our view," said Southwest Research Institute's Alan Stern, the lead scientist.
"It would be closer to reality to say Ultima Thule's shape is flatter, like a pancake.
"But more importantly, the new images are creating scientific puzzles about how such an object could even be formed. We've never seen something like this orbiting the sun."
Project scientist Hal Weaver of Johns Hopkins University, home to New Horizons' flight control centre, said the finding should spark new theories on how such primitive objects formed early in the solar system.
Ultima Thule is the most distant world ever explored. New Horizons zipped past it at high speed after becoming the first visitor to Pluto in 2015.
Mission managers hope to target an even more distant celestial object in the so-called Kuiper Belt, on the frozen fringes of the solar system, if the spacecraft remains healthy.
New Horizons is already 32 million miles beyond Ultima Thule. It will take another one and a half years to beam back all the flyby data.
The spacecraft took off from Florida in 2006.
Additional reporting by agencies.
