Nasa’s unmanned spaceship closes in on distant world
TAMPA: Nasa’s unmanned New Horizons spacecraft is closing in on its historic New Year’s flyby target, the most distant world ever studied, a frozen relic of the solar system some 6.4 billion kilometres away.
The cosmic object, known as Ultima Thule, is about the size of the US capital, Washington, and orbits in the dark and frigid Kuiper Belt about a billion miles beyond the dwarf planet, Pluto.
The spacecraft’s closest approach to this primitive space rock comes Jan 1 at 12.33am ET (0533 GMT).
Until then, what it looks like, and what it is made of, remain a mystery.
“This is a time capsule that is going to take us back four and a half billion years to the birth of the solar system,” said Alan Stern, the principal investigator on the project at the Southwest Research Institute, during a press briefing Friday.
A camera on board the New Horizons spacecraft is currently zooming in on Ultima Thule, so scientists can get a better sense of its shape and configuration – whether it is one object or several.
“We’ve never been to a type of object like this before,” said Kelsi Singer, New Horizons co-investigator at the Southwest Research Institute.
About a day prior, “we will start to see what the actual shape of the object is,” she said.
The spacecraft entered “encounter mode” on Dec 26, and is “very healthy,” added Stern.
Communicating with a spacecraft that is so far away takes six hours and eight minutes each way – or about 12 hours and 15 minutes round trip. — AFP