After blasting off from Cape Canaveral more than a decade ago, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has survived NASA’s most distant exploration of another world.
MIAMI (CBSMiami/AP) — After blasting off from Cape Canaveral more than a decade ago, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has survived NASA’s most distant exploration of another world.
New Horizons zoomed past the small celestial object known as Ultima Thule 3 ½ years after its spectacular brush with Pluto. Scientists said it will take nearly two years for New Horizons to beam back all its observations of Ultima Thule, a full billion miles beyond Pluto. At that distance, it takes six hours for the radio signals to reach Earth.
Scientists did not want to interrupt observations as New Horizons swept past Ultima Thule — described as a bullet intersecting with another bullet — so they delayed radio transmissions. The spacecraft is believed to have come within 2,200 miles of Ultima Thule.
