Seeking answers about the origins of our solar system, NASA’s intrepid robotic explorer surveys the most distant world ever explored.
In the outer reaches of our stellar neighborhood, an icy, ancient space rock nicknamed Ultima Thule has drifted alone for billions of years, unchanged since the earliest days of the solar system.
On January 1, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft became the first explorer to fly past the mysterious object located some 4 billion miles from Earth.
As most of us caroused and belted out poor renditions of „Auld Lang Syne“, the team at John Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) counted down the seconds until their spacecraft would pass its intended target. The closest approach, when New Horizons was just 2,200 miles (about 3,500 kilometers) from the surface of Ultima Thule, occurred at 12:33 a.m. EST Tuesday morning.
As New Horizons passed Ultima, the scenes at APL were reminiscent of New Year’s celebrations the world over, with a countdown before scientists and engineers began cheering and waving US flags. The intrepid robotic explorer, originally launched in January 2006, barreled past the most distant world we’ve yet explored at 32,000 miles per hour — or 9 miles per second.
The spacecraft’s 13-year journey has been filled with firsts, and with the Ultima Thule flyby, NASA achieves another historic moment in the exploration of our solar system.
