NASA news: New Horizons’ first look at farthest object on the edge of our solar system

approached the Kuiper Belt object on New Year’s Day, marking a historic milestone in the space probe’s already accomplished career. The record-setting spacecraft is now in orbit around Ultima Thule, some four billion miles (6.43 billion km) from the Sun. The US space agency has shared the first batch of Ultima Thule photographs, snapped thousands of miles above the icy object. NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine congratulated yesterday the teams behind the incredible accomplishment and praised NASA’s spirit of discovery and exploration.

He said: “Congratulations to NASA’s New Horizons team, Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory and the Southwest Research Institute for making history yet again.

“In addition to being the first to explore Pluto, today New Horizons flew by the most distant object ever visited by a spacecraft and became the first to directly explore an object that holds remnants from the birth of our solar system.

“This is what leadership in space exploration is all about.”

Ultima Thule is a giant, peanut-shaped rock on the edge of the solar system in a vastly unexplored region of space known as the Kuiper Belt.

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The object sits roughly one billion miles (1.6 billion km) beyond the dwarf planet Pluto.

On New Year’s Day, NASA confirmed New Horizons was operational and scanning the space rock about 10 hours after it first reached Ultima Thule.

Principal Investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado said: “New Horizons performed as planned today, conducting the farthest exploration of any world in history – four billion miles from the Sun.

“The data we have look fantastic and we’re already learning about Ultima from up close.

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“From here out the data will just get better and better.”

During the approach, NASA’s probe came within 2,200 miles (3,500km) of Ultima Thule at around 5.33am GMT (12.33am EST).

Initial observations show Ultima Thule has a rough bowling pin-like shape and is spinning end over end.

NASA estimates the rock measures roughly 20 by 10 miles (32 by 16km) although it could still prove to be two separate objects.

New Horizons will continue to scan and analyse the rock over the next 20 months.

NASA said: “When New Horizons launched in January 2006, George W. Bush was in the White House, Twitter had just been launched and Time Magazine’s Person of the Year was ‘you — all the worldwide web users’.

“Nine years into its journey, the spacecraft began its exploration of the Kuiper Belt with a flyby of Pluto and its moons.

“Almost 13 years after the launch, the spacecraft will continue its exploration of the Kuiper Belt until at least 2021.”

To mark the historic space mission, Queen guitarist Brian May unveiled his first solo single since 1998.

The single, dubbed New Horizons, premiered at the New Horizons headquarters in Maryland, US, on New Year’s Day.

Dr May, who holds a masters degree in astrophysics and previously collaborated on the mission, said: “This project has energised me in a new way. For me it’s been an exciting challenge to bring two sides of my life together – astronomy and music.

“It was Alan Stern, the Project Instigator of this amazing NASA Mission, who threw down the glove last May.

“He asked if I could come up with a theme for Ultima Thule which could be played as the NH probe reached this new destination.

“I was inspired by the idea that this is the furthest that the Hand of Man has ever reached – it will be by far the most distant object we have ever seen at close quarters, through the images which the spacecraft will beam back to Earth.”