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Wait, it's two weeks until flyby already...?
Wait, it's two weeks until flyby already...?
ecember 20, 2018
Ultima Thule's First Mystery
New Horizons scientists puzzled by lack of a 'light curve' from their Kuiper Belt flyby target
Ultima's shape was measured in July 2017 as its silhouette passed in front of a star – what's known as a stellar occultation.
View a animated version of this occultation »
Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI
NASA's New Horizons spacecraft is bearing down on Ultima Thule, its New Year's flyby target in the far away Kuiper Belt. Among its approach observations over the past three months, the spacecraft has been taking hundreds of images to measure Ultima's brightness and how it varies as the object rotates.
Those measurements have produced the mission's first mystery about Ultima. Even though scientists determined in 2017 that the Kuiper Belt object isn't shaped like a sphere – that it is probably elongated or maybe even two objects – they haven't seen the repeated pulsations in brightness that they'd expect from a rotating object of that shape. The periodic variation in brightness during every rotation produces what scientists refer to as a light curve.
December 22, 2018
New Horizons Notebook: On Ultima's Doorstep
Final Maneuver Guides New Horizons Precisely to Ultima
New Horizons carried out its last trajectory correction maneuver on approach to Ultima Thule last week, a short thruster burst to direct the spacecraft closer to its precise flyby aim point just 2,200 miles (3,500) above the mysterious Kuiper Belt object at 12:33 am EST on Jan. 1.
December 26, 2018
All About Ultima: New Horizons Flyby Target is Unlike Anything Explored in Space
NASA's New Horizons spacecraft is set to fly by a distant "worldlet" 4 billion miles from the Sun in just six days, on New Year's Day 2019. The target, officially designated 2014 MU69, was nicknamed "Ultima Thule," a Latin phrase meaning "a place beyond the known world," after a public call for name recommendations. No spacecraft has ever explored such a distant world.
Where to Watch
A schedule of televised events is below; all times EST and subject to change according to mission timelines and activities. Keep checking back for updates and additions!
Get the facts and figures on the Ultima flyby in one place!
History will be made on Tuesday when Nasa's New Horizons probe sweeps past the icy world known as Ultima Thule.
Occurring some 6.5 billion km (4 billion miles) from Earth, the flyby will set a new record for the most distant ever exploration of a Solar System object by a spacecraft.
The US space agency's New Horizons probe has made contact with Earth to confirm its successful flyby of the icy world known as Ultima Thule.
The encounter occurred some 6.5bn km (4bn miles) away, making it the most distant ever exploration of an object in our Solar System.
New Horizons acquired gigabytes of photos and other observations during the pass.
It will now send these home over the coming months.
The radio message from the robotic craft was picked up by one of Nasa's big antennas, in Madrid, Spain.
It had taken fully six hours and eight minutes to traverse the great expanse of space between Ultima and Earth.
January 15, 2019
New Movie Shows Ultima Thule from an Approaching New Horizons
NASA Spacecraft Begins Returning New Images, Other Data from Historic New Year's Flyby
This movie shows the propeller-like rotation of Ultima Thule in the seven hours between 20:00 UT (3 p.m. ET) on Dec. 31, 2018, and 05:01 UT (12:01 a.m.) on Jan. 1, 2019, as seen by the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) aboard NASA's New Horizons as the spacecraft sped toward its close encounter with the Kuiper Belt object at 05:33 UT (12:33 a.m. ET) on Jan. 1.