The New Year’s Day mission will see a robotic probe reach an unknown frozen dwarf planet in the “farthest exploration ever”. Known as the Kuiper Belt it is located at the edge of the solar system, where the leftovers from the formation of Earth and other planets 4.5 billion years ago are frozen in time. The flyby of Ultima Thule a small region within Kuiper Belt will take place early on January 1 at a speed of 32,000mph and an altitude of 2,175 miles (3,500km) above the surface. Ultima Thule, which is Latin for “beyond the known world” orbits one billion miles further from Earth than Pluto.
Alan Stern, the mission’s principal investigator, from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas, said: “The New Horizons spacecraft is healthy and on final approach to the first close-up exploration of a Kuiper Belt Object in history and the farthest exploration of any world, ever.”
He added: “The anticipation is palpable now. We are on the verge of an important scientific exploration almost 20 years in the making and, in many ways, unlike any other ever attempted.”
The project initially launched in 2006 to explore Pluto’s surface will now travel a billion miles beyond the furthest known major planet, Neptune in order to reach the Kuiper Belt.
Dr Alan Stern, the mission’s principal investigator, admits he has “no idea” what they will find at the planet which measures 19 miles (30km) in diameter.
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Dr Stern said: “What will Ultima reveal? No one knows. To me, that is what’s most exciting—this is pure exploration and fundamental science.”
Remarkably Ultima Thule is so far from the Sun that it gets only 0.05 per cent of the light that Earth receives with its atmospheric temperature not known.
It was discovered using the powerful Hubble space telescope in 2014.
The probe will aim to capture for the first time a detailed insight into its atmospheric composition, surface structure and geology.
The mission has cost $801 million and was launched from Florida in 2006.
The flypast is expected at around 5:33am GMT on January 1.