NASA spaceship set for New Year flyby of Ultima Thule, farthest world to be photographed
A NASA spaceship is zooming toward the farthest, and quite possibly the oldest, cosmic body ever photographed by humankind, a tiny, distant world called Ultima Thule about 3,976,775,630 miles away. The US space agency will ring in the New Year with a live online broadcast to mark historic flyby of the mysterious object in a dark and frigid region of space known as the Kuiper Belt at 12.33am on Jan 1 (0533 GMT Tuesday).
It was discovered in 2014 with the help of the Hubble Space Telescope, and is believed to be 20-30km in size. Hurtling through space at a speed of 32,000 miles per hour, the spacecraft aims to make its closest approach within 2,200 miles of the surface of Ultima Thule. Seven instruments on board will record high-resolution images and gather data about its size and composition.
Project scientist Hal Weaver of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory:
"This is the frontier of planetary science.
We finally have reached the outskirts of the solar system, these things that have been there since the beginning and have hardly changed - we think. We will find out."
Despite the partial US government shutdown, NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine vowed that the US space agency would broadcast the flyby. Normally, NASA TV and NASA's website would go dark during a government shutdown. NASA will also provide updates about another spacecraft, called OSIRIS-REx, that will enter orbit around the asteroid Bennu on New Year's Eve, Bridenstine said.
Real-time video of the actual flyby is impossible, since it takes more six hours for a signal sent from Earth to reach the spaceship, named New Horizons, and another six hours for the response to arrive. But if all goes well, the first images should be in hand by the end of New Year's Day.
Read more at https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/world/nasa-spaceship-ultima-thule-new-year-flyby-2019-brian-may-11075422
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