Tag: Ultima Thule
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Year in Space: From the Falcon Heavy’s first flight to the solar system’s last frontier
SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket clears the tower in February 2018. (GeekWire Photo / Kevin Lisota) Launches, launches, launches! 2018 was a big year for liftoffs, particularly for SpaceX and its billionaire CEO, Elon Musk. The past year also saw a number of notable trips to interplanetary destinations, including the Martian surface and two asteroids. What’s…
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12 years after launch, New Horizons probe zeroes in on mysterious Ultima Thule
Artwork shows NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft silhouetted by the sun during its New Year’s Day encounter with an icy object, or objects, known as Ultima Thule. (NASA / JHUAPL / SwRI Illustration / Steve Gribben) Act Two of the 12-year-old New Horizons mission to Pluto and the solar system’s icy Kuiper Belt is heating up, with…
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NASA’s New Horizons probe wakes up for New Year’s Day flyby
Artist’s concept of the New Horizons spacecraft. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI Speeding through the outer reaches of the solar system nearly 3.8 billion miles from Earth, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has awakened from a five-and-a-half month slumber, ready for a second act after its 2015 flyby of Pluto with a New Year’s Day encounter with a primordial…
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New Horizons spacecraft’s next distant destination gets a nickname
This image of Ultima Thule, or 2014 MU69, was captured by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2014. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI The frozen faraway miniature world targeted for a high-speed flyby by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft on Jan. 1, 2019, now has a nickname: Ultima Thule. Formally known as 2014 MU69, the robotic space probe’s next target…