Asteroid Ultima Thule is located at a distance of 6.6 Billion kilometers from Earth. Mission scientists named the bigger part of asteroid Ultima, the smaller one Thule.
At a press conference devoted to the analysis of the first scientific data collected by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft during the historic span of January 1, 2019, the mission team showed detailed images of the most distant worlds of the Solar System ever studied – the Kuiper Belt Object 2014 MU69 also known as Ultima Thule. Its form, which differs from everything we saw before, will shed light on the processes during which the planets were formed four and a half billion years ago.
This span is a historic achievement. Never before has any team of any mission ever tracked such a small cosmic body at such high speed so far in the abyss of space. New Horizons has set a new high bar for modern navigation in space.
-Alan Stern, a senior mission researcher at the Southwestern Research Institute (USA)
Images taken from a distance of 27 thousand kilometers during the approach to Ultima Thule showed that the 33-kilometer object consists of two spherical bodies stuck together with diameters of 19 kilometers and 14 kilometers, which united at the dawn of the formation of the Solar System. In addition, the scientists found that one turn around its axis Ultima Thule makes for 15 Earth hours and has a reddish tint.
The mission of the New Horizons is a time machine that brings us back to the origins of the solar system. Exploring Ultima Thule will help us understand how planets form not only around the Sun, but also in the orbits of other stars in our galaxy.
-Jeff Moore, a mission scientist
In the coming days and months, the spacecraft will transmit to Earth images and other scientific data collected during a meeting with Ultima Thule. Download valuable information will last more than one and a half years.
Ultima Thule asteroid. Amazing shape and properties.
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