{"id":18251,"date":"2018-12-02T18:21:37","date_gmt":"2018-12-02T10:21:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/12-years-after-launch-new-horizons-probe-zeroes-in-on-mysterious-ultima-thule\/"},"modified":"2018-12-02T18:21:37","modified_gmt":"2018-12-02T10:21:37","slug":"12-years-after-launch-new-horizons-probe-zeroes-in-on-mysterious-ultima-thule","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/12-years-after-launch-new-horizons-probe-zeroes-in-on-mysterious-ultima-thule\/","title":{"rendered":"12 years after launch, New Horizons probe zeroes in on mysterious Ultima Thule"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"New
Artwork shows NASA\u2019s New Horizons spacecraft silhouetted by the sun during its New Year\u2019s Day encounter with an icy object, or objects, known as Ultima Thule. (NASA \/ JHUAPL \/ SwRI Illustration \/ Steve Gribben)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Act Two of the 12-year-old New Horizons mission to Pluto and the solar system\u2019s icy Kuiper Belt is heating up, with less than a month to go before NASA\u2019s piano-sized spacecraft makes history\u2019s farthest-out close encounter with a celestial object.<\/p>\n

The New Year\u2019s flyby of a mysterious Kuiper Belt object (or objects) known as Ultima Thule (UL-ti-ma THOO-lee) follows up on the mission\u2019s first act, which hit a climax three years ago with a history-making flyby of Pluto.<\/p>\n

Launched in 2006, New Horizons was never meant to be a one-shot deal. Even before the Pluto flyby, mission managers used the Hubble Space Telescope to identify its next quarry, a billion miles farther out in the Kuiper Belt. Now it\u2019s crunch time for New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern and his team.<\/p>\n

Again.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis flyby is a lot harder than Pluto,\u201d Stern said. \u201cUltima is tiny, and faint, much harder to navigate on. \u2026 Another difficulty, or challenge, really, is that we\u2019re farther away, and that means communication times are longer. Bit rates are lower.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today the team beamed out commands to fine-tune New Horizons\u2019 trajectory using the spacecraft\u2019s navigational thrusters (which, by the way, were built at Aerojet Rocketdyne\u2019s facility in Redmond, Wash.). It took more than six hours for the commands to reach the probe at the speed of light, at a rate of 1,000 bits per second.<\/p>\n

By the time mission managers get confirmation that their commands have been executed (or not), New Horizons will have traveled hundreds of thousands of miles farther on its path (or off<\/em> its path).<\/p>\n

\"Alan
New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern is getting set for the Ultima Thule flyby. (Alan Stern via Twitter)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a one-shot, \u2018get it right or go home\u2019 deal, because there\u2019s no U-turn to go back and have a re-do. \u2026 You have to plan every chess move with the spacecraft more carefully,\u201d said Stern, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute.<\/p>\n

Dozens of scientists and engineers are due to converge on Johns Hopkins University\u2019s Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland to get set for the flyby, which is scheduled to come closest to Ultima Thule at 12:33 a.m. ET Jan. 1 (9:33 p.m. PT Dec. 31).<\/p>\n

If all goes according to plan, New Horizons will pass by Ultima at a distance of 2,200 miles, or less than a third of the distance used for the Pluto flyby, But the mission team is on the watch for any mini-moons that would force a shift to a safer, more distant trajectory.<\/p>\n

During a recent rehearsal, the team had to cope with a worst-case scenario in which New Horizons spotted 11 satellites in Ultima\u2019s vicinity. \u201cIt was just flying into a hornet\u2019s nest,\u201d Stern recalled.<\/p>\n

Neither Stern nor anyone else knows exactly what New Horizons will actually see.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t know what a primordial, ancient, perfectly preserved object like Ultima is, because no one\u2019s ever been to something like this,\u201d Stern explained. \u201cIt\u2019s terra incognita. It is pure exploration. We\u2019ll just see what it\u2019s all about \u2014 if it\u2019s got rings, if it\u2019s got a swarm of satellites.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Hubble imagery suggests that Ultima Thule (also known as 2014 MU69) measures roughly 20 miles wide \u2014 and might consist of two or more mutually orbiting objects. The dearth of knowledge leaves plenty of room for surprises.<\/p>\n

\u201cConsidering how much we knew about Pluto, and how much it astounded us, here we\u2019re starting from complete scratch,\u201d Stern said. \u201cWe barely know its size and its color. We can\u2019t tell you anything about its composition or its atmosphere, or satellites, any of that. But we\u2019re going to find out.\u201d<\/p>\n