Space

NASA's New Horizons New Year's Flyby of Distant Space Object a Space First

At a Glance

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft will intercept the most distant and ancient space object yet on New Year's day.
The space object, dubbed "Ultima Thule," is like a frozen time capsule that will give scientists unprecedented insight into deep space.

Call it the little spacecraft that could ... change what we know about our galaxy. NASA's New Horizons spacecraft is about to make the most distant space exploration ever when it intercepts an ancient object more than 4 billion miles from the Sun on New Year's day.

The spacecraft has been an interstellar tour de force since it launched back in 2006. Closest, most impressive photos of Pluto ever? Done that. Record for farthest photos ever taken away from Earth? Broke that.

But those accomplishments were millions of miles ago. Now, New Horizons will fly by an object technically known as 2014 MU69, but more epically known as "Ultima Thule." Technically, that's a Latin phrase for "beyond the farthest frontiers," but unofficially, it sounds like (and definitely is) the chief villain from an "Avengers" movie yet to drop.

So, what's the big deal?

Our "Avengers" villain lies out in the Kuiper Belt, a distant collection of icy objects from comets to dwarf planets which are like the Lincoln Logs of planets. Just seeing what's out in the Kuiper Belt — which is so far away that on a telescope it looks like a swarm of lightning bugs on a fuzzy black and white television — is a huge win for astronomers, but the prize discovery will come from Ultima Thule itself.

Scientists say Ultima is like a big frozen mummy born in the distant galaxy and should act like a time capsule because its frozen terroir should preserve its history. When photographed and analyzed, scientists gain insights into the behaviors and physical composition of places far beyond ours.

"New Horizons will map Ultima, map its surface composition, determine how many moons it has and find out if it has rings or even an atmosphere," Alan Stern, New Horizons Principal Investigator, said.

"It will make other studies, too, such as measuring Ultima's temperature and perhaps even its mass. In the space of one 72-hour period, Ultima will be transformed from a pinpoint of light — a dot in the distance — to a fully explored world. It should be breathtaking!"

Like all space endeavors, this won't be easy and requires people like Stern who are good at math.

New Horizons travels through deep space at 30,000 miles per hour and covers nearly a million miles a day, which makes the interception and timing of photos of a space object a wee bit trickier than timing New Year's Eve ball drop.

Ultimate Thule is so far away from our sun that backlighting those photos will get tricky, too. A blog post from the New Horizons team says that the sunlight out by Ultimate Thule is only as a bright as a full moon on Earth.

If all goes according to plan New Horizons will get within 2,200 miles of Ultima Thule, snap some candid photos that are even closer than the ones it took of Pluto, take some observations and change what we know about this part of the galaxy.

Not a bad way to kick off 2019.