{"id":13541,"date":"2018-10-28T22:56:41","date_gmt":"2018-10-28T14:56:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/new-horizons-on-track-for-historic-new-years-day-flyby-of-ultima-thule\/"},"modified":"2018-10-28T22:56:41","modified_gmt":"2018-10-28T14:56:41","slug":"new-horizons-on-track-for-historic-new-years-day-flyby-of-ultima-thule","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/new-horizons-on-track-for-historic-new-years-day-flyby-of-ultima-thule\/","title":{"rendered":"New Horizons on track for historic New Year\u2019s Day flyby of Ultima Thule"},"content":{"rendered":"

STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION<\/p>\n

\"\"
Artist\u2019s concept of the New Horizons spacecraft\u2019s flyby of 2014 MU69, also known as Ultima Thule. Credit: NASA\/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory\/Southwest Research Institute\/Steve Gribben<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Thirteen years outbound from Earth and a billion miles past Pluto, NASA\u2019s New Horizons probe is healthy and on course for a historic New Year\u2019s Day flyby of its next target, a frozen remnant left over from the birth of the solar system 4.6 billion years ago, project scientists say.<\/p>\n

Unofficially dubbed Ultima Thule (pronounced TOO-lee) in a NASA naming contest, the small 20-mile-wide body is one of countless denizens of the vast Kuiper Belt extending beyond the orbit of Pluto, taking 296 years to complete one trip around the sun. New Horizons is the first spacecraft to target a close encounter with a Kuiper Belt object, passing within 2,170 miles of Ultima Thule on Jan. 1.<\/p>\n

\u201cUltima Thule comes from Latin and it means \u2018beyond the farthest frontiers,\u2019 which is exactly what we\u2019re doing,\u201d said Alan Stern, the New Horizon\u2019s principal investigator. \u201cWe\u2019re making the farthest exploration of worlds in the history of space exploration. The spacecraft is now about a billion miles farther out than Pluto, which itself was the farthest world ever explored.\u201d<\/p>\n

At Ultima Thule\u2019s distance of 4 billion miles from the sun \u2014 43 times farther than Earth \u2014 it will take radio signals carrying high-resolution pictures, spectroscopic data and other priceless information, traveling at 186,000 miles every second, six hours seven minutes and 58 seconds to cross the gulf to Earth.<\/p>\n

Given the enormous distance and the spacecraft\u2019s 30-watt radio transmitter, it will take 20 months to beam back the full treasure trove of data collected before, during and after the flyby. But a sampling of high-resolution images is expected to reach scientists gathered at Johns Hopkins University\u2019s Applied Physics Laboratory the evening of Jan. 1 and the morning of Jan. 2.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have no idea what to expect,\u201d Stern told reporters Wednesday at the American Astronomical Society\u2019s Division of Planetary Sciences meeting in Knoxville, Tenn.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to an entirely new type of world, something formed much farther out than anything we have ever explored and which has been kept in this tremendous deep freeze of the outer solar system for the entire four billion years since its formation,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

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A simulation of the resolution of New Horizons\u2019s images of Ultima Thule expected to be returned to Earth during the encounter. Credit: Kelsi Singer\/SWRI<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Said Carey Lisse, a New Horizons Science Team collaborator at the Applied Physics Laboratory: \u201cIf New Horizons\u2019 (Pluto) flyby has taught us anything, expectations aren\u2019t reality. We got totally surprised at Pluto, we\u2019re going to get surprised again.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cUltima Thule could be heavily cratered, highly pitted or it could even be smooth from ancient flows and ancient activity,\u201d he said. \u201cWe don\u2019t know. We simply aren\u2019t going to know until we get there in January. I\u2019m waiting to be surprised.\u201d<\/p>\n

Launched in January 2006, New Horizons flew past Jupiter in February 2007, using the giant planet\u2019s gravity to fling it onto a fast-track trajectory to Pluto. Even so, it took another eight years to reach its target in July 2015, flying past at a distance of 7,800 miles to collect the first close-up pictures of the famously demoted dwarf planet.<\/p>\n

Even before the encounter, mission planners sought help from the Hubble Space Telescope to look for possible targets of opportunity beyond Pluto that might be close enough to New Horizons\u2019 trajectory to permit a subsequent flyby.<\/p>\n

Ultima Thule was discovered by Hubble in 2014 and after the Pluto encounter, NASA managers approved a mission extension and New Horizons\u2019 course was adjusted to set up the Jan. 1 flyby.<\/p>\n

Based on occultation observations in which Ultima Thule passed in front of a background star, scientists believe the target is either bi-lobed or elongated. New Horizons first \u201csaw\u201d its quarry on Aug. 16, at a distance of more than 100 million miles, but it is so much smaller than Pluto it appeared as a barely distinguishable pinpoint of light.<\/p>\n

It will not be much more than that until New Year\u2019s Eve.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we were 10 weeks out from Pluto, we could already resolve its disk about as well as the Hubble Space Telescope and each week we can see more and more detail,\u201d Stern said. \u201cBut Ultima 10 weeks out is just a dot in the distance. And it will remain as a dot in the distance until literally the day before the flyby when we start to resolve it.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy the day after the flyby, we\u2019ll have high resolution images, we hope even higher resolution than the best images of Pluto. So it\u2019s going to be quick.\u201d<\/p>\n

During the spacecraft\u2019s approach, scientists will use its cameras to scan the area around Ultima Thule \u2014 the official name is 2014 MU69 \u2014 to look for any signs of dust, moonlets, rings or other possible hazards that might pose a danger to New Horizons. Flight planners can divert the spacecraft with an engine firing as late as mid December, moving the aim point farther away if required.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s some danger and some suspense because we don\u2019t know in detail what the hazard environment might be,\u201d Stern said. \u201cOur spacecraft is traveling at 32,000 miles an hour, that\u2019s about 10 miles per second almost, and a collision with even the smallest shard would probably be fatal to the spacecraft. We\u2019re conducting a hazard watch using the on-board telescopes and cameras and we\u2019re prepared \u2026 to divert from the closest approach to a little be father out where it may be safer.\u201d<\/p>\n

New Horizons is equipped with a suite of sophisticated instruments: a color camera and infrared spectral imager, an ultraviolet spectral imager, a high-resolution camera and sensors to detect electrically charged solar wind particles, high-energy particles and dust. Its radio and high-gain antenna also are used for radio science investigations.<\/p>\n

If all goes well, New Horizons will map the body\u2019s geology, surface color and composition, search for signs of ammonia, carbon dioxide, methane and water ice, search for satellites and\/or rings and look for any signs of cometary coma-like features.<\/p>\n

Regardless of what it finds, New Horizons\u2019 flyby of Ultima Thule \u201cis going to be historic.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe New Year\u2019s going to bring us some wonderful new knowledge from the edge of our solar system,\u201d Stern said. \u201cWe\u2019re going to set some new records and we are really looking forward to bringing this to the public, to engage the public in what NASA does best, which is to explore. There is one thing you can say about Ultima for sure, it\u2019s far out.\u201d<\/p>\n

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This global mosaic of Pluto was created from imagery from the New Horizons spacecraft\u2019s July 2015 flyby. Credit: NASA\/JHUAPL\/SWRI<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The same day Stern was outlining the road ahead for New Horizons, a Southwest Research Institute team he headed released a preliminary report demonstrating the feasibility of an electric-propulsion spacecraft designed to orbit Pluto, using the gravity of its large moon Charon to repeatedly change course and eventually fling it out into the Kuiper Belt.<\/p>\n

The spacecraft would use the Charon gravity assists to visit each of Pluto\u2019s four smaller moons for close-up observations and even to directly sample the dwarf planet\u2019s tenuous atmosphere during low-altitude passes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis tour is far from optimized, yet it is capable of making five or more flybys of each of Pluto\u2019s four small moons, while examining Pluto\u2019s polar and equatorial regions using plane changes,\u201d said Tiffany Finley, who designed the orbital tour. \u201cThe plan also allows for an extensive up-close encounter with Charon before dipping into Pluto\u2019s atmosphere for sampling before the craft uses Charon one last time to escape into the Kuiper Belt for new assignments.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stern, a staunch supporter of the Pluto-is-a-planet school of thought, said the Southwest Research Institute study proves a single spacecraft can both explore the Pluto system in detail as well as carry out multiple observations in the Kuiper Belt.<\/p>\n

\u201cWho would have thought that a single mission using already available electric propulsion engines could do all this?\u201d Stern said in a release describing the mission\u2019s feasibility. \u201cNow that our team has shown that the planetary science community doesn\u2019t have to choose between a Pluto orbiter or flybys of other bodies in the Kuiper Belt, but can have both, I call this combined mission the \u2018gold standard\u2019 for future Pluto and Kuiper Belt exploration.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION Artist\u2019s concept of the New Horizons spacecraft\u2019s flyby of 2014 MU69, also known as Ultima Thule. Credit: NASA\/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory\/Southwest Research Institute\/Steve Gribben Thirteen years outbound from Earth and a billion miles past Pluto, NASA\u2019s New Horizons probe is healthy and on course for a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2337,1861,2173,2020,2174,1561,2848,1563],"class_list":["post-13541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-2014-mu69","tag-jhuapl","tag-kuiper-belt","tag-new-frontiers","tag-new-horizons","tag-planetary-science","tag-pluto","tag-solar-system"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13541"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13541\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}