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Thanks to the flight of the New Horizons space shuttle to Ultima Thule (or MU69 2014) (1), we now know what is the shape of the object in the Kuiper belt and was discovered in 2014: According to NASA, Ultima Thule has a shape similar to that of a snowman and consists of two circular objects united.
The mission is already a record player, Ultima Thule being the furthest away from an object in the world. Solar System, which is about 6.5 billion kilometers from the Earth. In the Kuiper Belt area, there are thousands of tiny frozen worlds that are remnants of the formation of the solar system and, therefore, studying Ultima Thule up close offers us the opportunity to learn more about the formation of our planetary system.
According to Jeff Moore, co-Investigator of the mission, the two objects that make up Ultima Thule probably met at such a slow speed that if we compare it to the speed of a car accident, it would not even be necessary to trigger the insurance company. However, the object is actually a reddish color as it was suspected, and the scientists of the mission compared their tone to that of Charon, the moon of Pluto. Alan Stern, senior investigator at New Horizons, also said the first high-resolution color photos should be ready in February, but his team will begin writing the first scientific article on new discoveries as early as next week
After crossing Ultima Thule, the New Horizons spacecraft can see its extended mission again. His initial mission was to study Pluto and his moons, which happened in 2015. But as the spacecraft was in perfect state of conservation and that it was successfully communicating with the Earth, the NASA has agreed to adapt his journey to the mysterious Ultima Thule. From now on, it is possible that the course of the ship will be changed again to visit at least one other object of the Kuiper belt, which should occur in the next decade if the money is released. Moreover, New Horizons has sufficient fuel reserves to continue running until 2030.
But before that, we will continue to receive New Horizons data collected during its pbadage by Ultima Thule at over the next 20 months.
You can check below the recording of the live broadcast made by the space agency Wednesday (2), which presented the preliminary information on Ultima Thule and showed us this first real image of the object:
] Source: NASA
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