New Year, New Horizons: NASA Spacecraft Zips By Most Distant World Ever Studied

NASA’s New Horizon Spacecraft accomplished a historic flyby of the farthest, and quite possibly the oldest cosmic body explored by humankind named Ultima Thule on Tuesday (1 January), Times of India has reported.

Ultima Thule is located one billion miles beyond Pluto at 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).

The lead scientist of Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, Alan Stern, had expected the New Year's encounter of the spacecraft to be riskier and more difficult than the rendezvous with Pluto. 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’.