Nasa probe believed to have performed most distant space flyby

New Horizons expected to have encountered Ultima Thule space rock on edge of solar system

A Nasa probe is believed to have performed the most distant flyby in history in the early hours of New Year’s Day, barrelling past a space rock called Ultima Thule on the outer edge of the solar system.

Unless gremlins intervene, the New Horizons spacecraft will have zoomed by the cosmic body at 5.33am GMT and snapped thousands of photographs of the dark, icy body as it speeds on into the void.

Ultima Thule lies 4bn miles from Earth in the Kuiper belt, a band of dwarf planets, space rocks and icy debris left over from the formation of the solar system 4.6bn years ago.

New Horizons is so distant that mission scientists had no way of helping out with any last-minute glitches. Instead any final troubleshooting will have to have been handled by the probe’s onboard software.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/dec/31/new-horizons-heads-for-flyby-of-space-rock-ultima-thule