Explanation: When we celebrate the start of 2019, on January 1 the New Horizons spacecraft will flyby Ultima Thule. A world of the Kuiper belt 6.5 billion kilometers from the Sun, the nickname Ultima Thule (catalog designation 2014 MU69) fittingly means "beyond the known world". Following its 2015 flyby of Pluto, New Horizons was targeted for this journey, attempting the most distant flyby for a spacecraft from Earth by approaching Ultima Thule to within about 3500 kilometers. The tiny world itself is about 30 kilometers in size. This year, an observing campaign with Earth-based telescopes determined the shape of the object to be a contact binary or a close binary sytem as in this artist's illustration. New Horizons will image close up its unexplored surface in the dim light of the distant Sun.

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Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (USRA)
NASA Web Site Statements, Warnings, and Disclaimers
NASA Official: Jay Norris. Specific rights apply.
A service of: LHEA at NASA / GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.

Publikacii s klyuchevymi slovami: kuiper belt - Poyas Koipera Publikacii so slovami: kuiper belt - Poyas Koipera
Sm. takzhe: Drevnyaya kontaktnaya dvoinaya sistema 2014 MU69 Samoe chetkoe izobrazhenie Ul'tima Tule Novye dannye: neozhidanno ploskaya forma Ul'tima Tule Ul'tima Tule ot "Novyh Gorizontov" Vrashenie Ul'tima Tule Ul'tima i Tule Makemake na okraine Solnechnoi sistemy Vse publikacii na tu zhe temu >>