{"id":18202,"date":"2019-01-02T21:10:34","date_gmt":"2019-01-02T13:10:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/nasas-new-horizons-probe-reveals-the-shape-of-its-icy-target-its-a-snowman\/"},"modified":"2019-01-02T21:10:34","modified_gmt":"2019-01-02T13:10:34","slug":"nasas-new-horizons-probe-reveals-the-shape-of-its-icy-target-its-a-snowman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/nasas-new-horizons-probe-reveals-the-shape-of-its-icy-target-its-a-snowman\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA\u2019s New Horizons probe reveals the shape of its icy target: \u2018It\u2019s a snowman!\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"2014
The latest view from NASA\u2019s New Horizons probe shows an icy object known as 2014 MU69 or as Ultima Thule to consist of two balls of icy material stuck together. (NASA \/ JHUAPL \/ SwRI Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

LAUREL, Md. \u2014 The New Horizons spacecraft\u2019s picture of an icy object 4 billion miles from Earth became a lot clearer today, and took on a surprisingly familiar shape.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a snowman,\u201d mission principal investigator Alan Stern, a planetary scientist from the Southwest Research Institute, said during a news briefing here at Johns Hopkins University\u2019s Applied Physics Laboratory.<\/p>\n

The two-balled shape reminded others of BB-8, the plucky droid from \u201cStar Wars: The Force Awakens.\u201d It even has a BB-8ish orangish-reddish color theme going on.<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s imagery, derived from data sent back to Earth on the previous day, literally casts a whole new light on the 19-mile-long object \u2014 which is known by its official designation, 2014 MU69, or by the nickname given by the New Horizons team, Ultima Thule (\u201cUl-ti-ma Too-lay\u201d).<\/p>\n

The views were captured by the piano-sized probe\u2019s high-resolution camera from a distance of roughly 18,000 miles, a half-hour before the time of close approach on New Year\u2019s Day. Two black-and-white pictures were released, with a resolution as fine as 140 meters (460 feet) per pixel.<\/p>\n

The Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager, or LORRI, had \u201c28,000 pixels on the target \u2026 which way beats six pixels,\u201d Stern joked referring to the fuzzy, bowling-pin picture that was released the day before.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat image is so 2018. \u2026 That bowling pin is gone,\u201d Stern said.<\/p>\n

An analysis of the picture showed that Ultima\u2019s brightest spots reflect 13 percent of the light that falls on them, while the darkest spots reflect only 6 percent.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s about as reflective as garden-variety dirt, and it\u2019s illuminated by a sun that\u2019s 1,900 times fainter than it is on a sunny day down on Earth,\u201d Stern said. \u201cSo we were basically chasing it down in the dark, at 32,000 miles an hour.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another camera captured a color view, revealing that Ultima is definitely red, said Carly Howett, a New Horizons science team member from the Southwest Research Institute.<\/p>\n

\"Images
The New Horizons team combined a low-resolution color image of 2014 MU69, or Ultima Thule, with sharper black-and-white imagery to produce the composite view at right. (NASA \/ JHUAPL \/ SwRI Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

SwRI\u2019s Cathy Olkin, one of the mission\u2019s deputy project scientists, said the red color could well be due to organic chemicals known as tholins that are coating the surface. Tholins are also behind the reddish color in a crater on the surface of Pluto\u2019s biggest moon, Charon, but scientists say the process behind its deposition on Ultima is likely to be different.<\/p>\n

Ultima was chosen as a follow-up object for study, coming after New Horizons\u2019 2015 flyby of Pluto and its moons. Stern said the thing that was most surprising about the experience was \u201cpicking a Kuiper Belt object out of a hat\u201d and then finding out that the team had picked a winner.<\/p>\n

The new images show Ultima to be a contact binary, consisting of two separate masses that became stuck together. The larger, 12-mile-wide mass has been nicknamed \u201cUltima.\u201d The smaller, 9-mile-wide mass was given the nickname \u201cThule.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those two balls probably coalesced from primordial icy material in a cold zone known as the Kuiper Belt, perhaps millions or even hundreds of thousands of years after the solar system\u2019s birth more than 4.5 billion years ago, said Jeff Moore, a New Horizons team member from NASA\u2019s Ames Research Center. Then the balls would have been gently drawn together by their mutual gravitational attraction, he said.<\/p>\n

Ultima\u2019s current rotation rate, estimated at about 15 hours for a complete turn, isn\u2019t fast enough to fling the two balls apart, Moore said.<\/p>\n

Moore said \u201cwe\u2019re basically looking at the first planetesimals,\u201d which served as building blocks for what would eventually become planets.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe should think of New Horizons as a time machine, a wayback machine to time zero,\u201d Moore said. \u201cThat has brought us back to the very beginning of solar system history, to a place where we can observe the most primordial building blocks of the planets.\u201d<\/p>\n

The flow of images and scientific insights is expected to get stronger in the days, weeks and months ahead, as the spacecraft sends back several gigabytes of stored data at a rate of 1,000 bits per second. \u201cWe have far less than 1 percent of the data \u2026 already down on the ground,\u201d Stern said.<\/p>\n

Another round of imagery and data was received today and will be the focus of a news conference on Thursday.<\/p>\n