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In 1930, Pluto became the first Kuiper Belt object to be discovered. It would be another 62 years until the second one was known. This had a lot to do with the fact that KBOs are quite far away from Earth and generally quite dark. Pluto has a rather bright, reflective surface, compared to many other KBOs, as well as its large size. These qualities made Pluto easier to detect with the telescopes available in the early 20th century. At the time, scientists had not yet developed ideas about the outer solar system that suggested Pluto might have a lot of company. So, despite its oddly elliptical and tilted orbit, it made sense at the time to think of Pluto as a planet.
Both Arrokoth and Pluto are in the Kuiper Belt – a donut-shaped region of icy bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune. There may be millions of these icy objects, collectively referred to as Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs) or trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs), in this distant region of our solar system. Similar to the asteroid belt, the Kuiper Belt is a region of leftovers from the solar system's early history. Like the asteroid belt, it has also been shaped by a giant planet, although it's more of a thick disk (like a donut) than a thin belt.
The Kuiper Belt shouldn't be confused with the Oort Cloud, which is a much more distant region of icy, comet-like bodies that surrounds the solar system, including the Kuiper Belt. Both the Oort Cloud and the Kuiper Belt are thought to be sources of comets. The Kuiper Belt is truly a frontier in space – it's a place we're still just beginning to explore and our understanding is still evolving.
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