For space explorers
For space explorers
The first science results from the flyby of 2014 MU69 by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft have now been published, revealing more details about one the strangest objects in our Solar System.
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The Kuiper Belt is a vast region of rocky debris in the outer Solar System beyond Neptune, similar to the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. The objects in this belt – Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) – are ancient, left over from the formation of the Solar System billions of years ago, and range in size from a few hundred feet to a few thousand miles.
Pluto is the largest of these worlds, and while there is a great range in sizes of KBOs, a new study has shown that there is a surprising lack of the smallest objects less than a mile in size.
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NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has just completed its newest flyby – of the Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) called Ultima Thule (aka 2014 MU69). New Horizons sped past the small but intriguing little world at 12:33 a.m. EST on Jan. 1, 2019. The event marks a milestone for the most distant object in the Solar System ever to be visited by a spacecraft from Earth. The good news was first reported during a NASA press conference on January 1. The flyby has revealed an “entirely new kind of world” according to today’s follow-up press conference.
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NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is now only two days away from a historic rendezvous with its next target – Ultima Thule. At 4 billion miles away, the Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) will soon become the most distant thing in the Solar System ever visited by humanity, and New Horizons is locked on and on final approach at nearly 1 million miles per day for its close encounter on Jan. 1, 2019.
Excitement is building again for New Horizons team members and the public alike, as the spacecraft which previously visited Pluto is now only 21 days away from its next historic flyby, some 4 billion miles from Earth and one billion miles beyond Pluto itself.
The target is a small rocky body, a Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) named ‘Ultima Thule’, and New Horizons is now closing in at a speed of almost one million miles per day, aiming for a New Years Eve flyby just after 12:33am EST on Jan. 1, 2019.
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NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is way, way past Pluto now and still nearly a year away from its next encounter with an object in the Kuiper Belt, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been busy. In fact, the probe just broke the record for the farthest images from Earth ever taken by a spacecraft, with new images of a field of stars and two other Kuiper Belt objects. The new images break the record formerly held by the Voyager 1 spacecraft in 1990.
Happy New Year! As well as simply the start of a new year, today also marks another significant date – exactly one year from now, the New Horizons spacecraft will encounter its next target deep in the Kuiper Belt, much farther out than Pluto. On Jan. 1, 2019, New Horizons will fly past another Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) called 2014 MU69. This will be the most distant object to ever be visited by a spacecraft in our Solar System so far.
It has been nearly two-and-a-half years now since New Horizons sped past Pluto and its moons in July 2015, and now the spacecraft is starting to close in on its next target – another object in the Kuiper Belt called 2014 MU69. It lies a billion miles farther out from the Sun than Pluto, and little is still known about it, but the closer New Horizons gets, with a scheduled flyby for Jan. 1, 2019, the more scientists are starting to learn about what it looks like. The newest research indicates that, despite being so small, much smaller than Pluto, it may also have a moon.
NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is well over halfway between Pluto and its next historic intercept target, Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) 2014 MU69, aiming for a New Years Day flyby at 2:00 a.m. EDT on January 1, 2019. The $728 million, piano-sized 1,000 pound spacecraft will put its seven high-tech science instruments into overdrive when it flies by the tiny world, only about 20 miles across, and will do so at a much closer distance than it did Pluto – only about 1,900 miles (3,000 kilometers) from the surface. Continue reading
It was two years ago today that NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft became the first-ever probe to visit Pluto in the cold, outer fringes of the Solar System. To help celebrate the occasion, NASA has posted a new video of the epic flyby, when the spacecraft soared over the tall mountains and vast icy plains of this small but active world.
July 14, 2015, marks the first day where humanity completed the first reconnaissance of every “planet” in our solar system, when NASA’s $728 million, piano-sized 1,000 pound New Horizons spacecraft made its closest approach to Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, cruising less than 8,000 miles over the surface of Pluto and putting its seven high-tech science instruments into overdrive as it cruised by at 31,000 mph, fulfilling its destiny after a 9.5 year journey across 3 billion miles – some 32 times further from the sun than the Earth is.
It wasn’t long after, that NASA aimed the spacecraft for its next target, which lies 1 billion miles beyond Pluto; over 4 billion miles from home. Continue reading
With the Pluto flyby now well behind them, the New Horizons team has been busy preparing for the next encounter, the small Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) called 2014 MU69. New Horizons is scheduled to fly past 2014 MU69 on Jan. 1, 2019, and it will be the farthest Solar System body to ever be visited so far. From June 2-3, astronomers in Argentina and South Africa pointed their telescopes at 2014 MU69, hoping to catch its “shadow” moving across a background star as it transited the star (also known as a stellar occultation). This would help determine the object’s exact size and allow the mission team to fine-tune the planned flyby. Back at Pluto, there is more evidence, from data gathered by New Horizons during the flyby, for clouds in Pluto’s thin atmosphere.