Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Spacecraft makes distant flyby
NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft pulled off the most distant exploration of another world Tuesday.
LAUREL, Md. — NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft pulled off the most distant exploration of another world Tuesday, skimming past a tiny, icy object 4 billion miles from Earth that looks to be shaped like a bowling pin.
Flight controllers in Maryland declared success 10 hours after the high-risk encounter at the mysterious body known as Ultima Thule on the frozen fringes of our solar system — 1 billion miles beyond Pluto.
“I don’t know about all of you, but I’m really liking this 2019 thing so far,” lead scientist Alan Stern of Southwest Research Institute said to applause.
The approach came a halfhour into the new year, and 31⁄2 years after New Horizons’ unprecedented swing past Pluto.
For Ultima Thule — which wasn’t even known when New Horizons departed Earth in 2006 — the endeavor was more difficult. The spacecraft zoomed within 2,200 miles of it, more than three times closer than the Pluto flyby.
Operating on autopilot, New Horizons was out of radio contact with controllers at Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory from late Monday afternoon until late Tuesday morning. Scientists wanted the spacecraft staring down Ultima Thule and collecting data, not turning toward Earth to phone home.
When a solid radio link was acquired and team members reported that their spacecraft systems were good, mission operations manager Alice Bowman declared: “We have a healthy spacecraft.”
Later, she added to more applause: “We did it again.”
Cheers erupted in the control center and in a nearby auditorium, where hundreds more — still weary from the double countdowns on New Year’s Eve — gathered to await word.
Scientists and other team members embraced and shared high-fives, while the spillover auditorium crowd gave a standing ovation.
Stern, Bowman and other key players soon joined their friends in the auditorium, where the celebration continued and a news conference took place. The speakers took delight in showing off the latest picture of Ultima Thule, taken just hundreds of thousands of miles before the 12:33 a.m. close approach.
“Ultima Thule is finally revealing its secrets to us,” said project scientist Hal Weaver of Johns Hopkins.
Based on the early, rudimentary images, Ultima Thule is highly elongated — about 22 miles by 9 miles. It’s also spinning, although scientists don’t yet know how fast.
The New Horizons team is already pushing for another flyby in the 2020s, while the nuclear power and other spacecraft systems are still good.
“There’s a bit of all of us on that spacecraft,” Bowman said, “and it will continue after we’re long gone here on Earth.”