Farthest Ever Human Exploration: After Pluto, NASA’s New Horizons Spacecraft To Reach Ultima Thule On New Year’s Day

NASA’s New Horizon Spacecraft will zip past the scrawny, icy object nicknamed Ultima Thule soon after the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Day, NDTV Gadgets has reported. The icy body’s official name is MU69. It got the nickname Ultima Thule through an online vote

Ultima Thule will be the farthest world ever explored by humankind. It is located one billion miles beyond Pluto and an astounding 4 billion miles from Earth (1.6 billion kilometres and 6.4 billion kilometres). The icy body is as old as solar system's origin 4.5 billion years ago.

The lead scientist of Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, Alan Stern, expects the New Year's encounter of the spacecraft to be riskier and more difficult than the rendezvous with Pluto. The higher risk is because the spacecraft is older and the target is smaller. It is a close flyby and the distance of the spacecraft from earth is greater.

NASA had launched the New Horizons spacecraft in 2006. Its size is comparable to that of a baby grand piano. It flew past Pluto in 2015 and provided the first close-up views of the celestial body. Ultima Thule is in the heart of an area in the solar system called ‘Twilight Zone’.