6.4 billion kilometers away from earth, the NASA probe New Horizons flew to the Ultima Thule in the past. Never before has approached to a man-made object, a so-far-away celestial bodies.
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Nasa probe hits the “Ultima Thule”
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NASA probe reaches edge of solar system
The space probe New Horizons was addressed Tuesday morning Central European time your cameras from as near as possible to the celestial body Ultima Thule, in a space region called the Kuiper belt.
The researchers hope data from the probe’s findings about the formation of planets. The US space Agency NASA has released a blurry image of Ultima Thule, which was taken by New Horizons from a distance of just under two million kilometres. This image has fascinated researchers, because it seems to show a rather long drawn-out space of the object, and not a round.
This NASA composite image shows the Kuiper belt, in the middle, through the cross-hairs marked – Ultima Thule
The probe New Horizons should come in your only a few seconds long flyby on new year’s day up to approximately 3500 kilometres of Ultima Thule, and about 900 pictures. First clearer images are expected to arrive in the next three days.
About ten hours later, NASA received the Signal that the flyby was successfully completed. Up to New Horizons, all data is transmitted via the extremely little-known celestial body Ultima Thule to the earth, can pass according to NASA, nearly two years.
“A relic from the early days of the solar system”
“We have finally reached the edge of the solar system – the things that were there from the beginning, and hardly to have changed, as we believe. We’ll find out,” said Hal Weaver from the Johns Hopkins research center. Up in the 90s, mankind had known nothing of the existence of the Kuiper belt in the outer space.
NASA graphic: Ultima Thule might look like
Ultima Thule-be might be unique, because it was a relic from the early days of the solar system and the answers to the origin of other planets, said Queen guitarist Brian May, who has a degree in astrophysics and, more recently, in a new Song, the NASA probe, New Horizons has sung.
New Horizons since 2006 on the road in All
Ultima Thule was discovered, 2014, with the help of the Hubble space telescope. Researchers do not yet know how the sky is such an object – whether there are craters or the surface is rather smooth, if it consists of only one object or several.
New Horizons has been in operation since January 2006. The probe was launched from the spaceport at Cape Canaveral in the U.S. state of Florida, and thereafter, on numerous planets coming in. 2015 happened to be the first flight of the body of Pluto. Your razor-sharp images of the dwarf planet were a Sensation.
qu/uh (dpa, afp, rtr)