A distant, icy world

NASA scientists have received their first glimpse of the most distant object ever explored by spacecraft: a small, icy world some 4.5 billion miles from Earth. The New Horizon probe last week snapped a photo of Ultima Thule—Latin for “Beyond the Known World”—as the craft sped toward its target at 32,000 mph. The object looks like a big snowman; is about the size of Washington, D.C.; and lurks in the Kuiper Belt, a ring of icy objects at the solar system’s edge. Its curious shape, which scientists call a “contact